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Untitled Article
Unquestionably the greater part of this impression belongs to ourselves , not to the object ; but it is not the mere thought of a sentimentalist that he is actually standing where this or that great man stood before him : it is that we are violently thrust , as it were , upon a by-gone state of things which , whether an illusion or not we cannot help considering as noble and sublime ; and this violence we cannot resist if we would , because the barrenness in
which the present occupiers leave the land , and an incredible mass of ruins , force it even upon the very eye-sight ; and because this past state assumes to the inner sense a greatness that shuts out all envy , which we feel too happy to sympathize with merely in imagination , and with which no other sympathy is comparable . In the mean while the external sense is also filled by the vastness and the simplicity of the forms of nature , by richness of vegetation , still not so rank as in a more southern climate , and the
distinctness of outline , brought out by the clear atmosphere , as well as beauty of colour in full brightness . Nature is enjoyed as if it were art . All impressions of poverty or of necessity are removed ; and yet ideas of contrast are every where suggested . Our contemplation becomes elegiac or satirical . But this is our feeling only : Horace found Tibur more modern than we do Tivoli—his beatus Me qui procul negotiis proves that . But it is only an
illusion when we wish to be inhabitants of Athens or Rome . Antiquity must be presented to us as at a distance , removed from every thing that is vulgar , and as entirely passed away ; hence I feel , with a friend of mine , as to the ruins—one is always vexed when a half buried fragment is dug out . It can at the best be only an acquisition for mere scholarship , at the cost of the imagination . For myself I know only two equally horrid things , the cultivation of
the Campagna di Roma , and the giving a good police to Rome , in which no man could use a dagger . Should there ever arise a Pope who is a man of business , ( may the seventy-two Cardinals protect us from him !) I shall depart . It is only while there remains in Rome so divine an anarchy , and around Rome so divine a desert , that there is space for the shades , one of whom is worth more than a whole generation . ' ! I ! *
Of Winkelmann ' s early death , our author writes thus strikingly . ' It was from the highest point of happiness which he could dare to wish for , that he departed from the world . His country was expecting him , his friends were stretching their arms towards him , all the manifestations of love , which he so much needed , all the testimonies of public esteem , which he valued so highly , were awaiting his appearance , in order to be poured upon him . And
Goethe ' s fears , if they were his , have proved not altogether idle . We believe , though the Campagna is as much a desert as ever , that assassinations at Rome have greatly declined . As to anarchy indeed in the Roman State * , he miut be hard to please , who is not satisfied with the present state of things . This remark we venture to print as a note only . We confess it to be Tery pkitiiter-milstig , ( phiiistine-like , ) as our friend the Edinburgh reviewer would 9 &y »
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Goethe s Work * . 273
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1833, page 273, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2612/page/57/
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