Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ... SECOND RESIDENCE IN.ROME. T.onga sit hnic aetas dominaeque potentia terrae, Sitque sub hac oriens occiduusque dies. (Long live this mistress of the earth, and long may she reign over the lands of the rising and the setting sun.) JUNE. Correspondence. Borne, 8 June, 1787. The day before yesterday I happily arrived here again, and yesterday the festal Corpus-Christi day at once reBomanised me. I will freely confess that my departure from Naples caused me no little regret. It was not so much leaving such a splendid country as turning my back on a powerful eruption, which was making its way from the summit to the sea, and which I would fain have contemplated in its neighbourhood, adopting into my experiences its peculiar features and character of which I had heard and read so much. To-day, however, my longing after this great scene of nature has been assuaged. The pious festival, with all the throng attending it, was no doubt imposing as a whole, yet here and there betrayed some symptoms of bad taste, wounding the inward sense. The spectacle of the tapestries, however, after Raphael's cartoons, has lifted me up again into the region of higher contemplations. The most excellent of them, which are undoubtedly to be ascribed to him, are spread out alongside of each other; the rest, the invention probably of pupils, contemporaries and fellow-artists, attach themselves not unworthily to these, and cover the boundless spaces. Borne, 16 June, 1787. Let me now, again, dear friends, address a word to you. As for me, all goes very well. I am getting ever more acquainted with myself, and learn to distinguish what is appropriate to and what is foreign from my nature. I am diligent, absorbing things on all sides of me, and growing from within outwards....