What I have seen and inferred of the _personnel_ of the Court requires to be further tested, before I set it down. To-day the king is gone hunting the wolves: they hope to kill at least five.
When I would write words, images only start before my eyes,--the beautiful land, the free sea; the hazy islands, the roaring mountain;--powers to delineate all this fail me.
Here in this country one at last understands how it ever came into the head of man to till the ground--here where it produces everything, and where one may look for as many as from three to five crops in the year.
I have seen much, and reflected still more. The world opens itself to me more and more--all even that I have long known is at last becoming my own. How quick to know, but how slow to put in practice, is the human creature!
The only pity is, that I cannot at each moment communicate to others my observations. But, both as man and artist, one is here driven backwards and forwards by a hundred ideas of his own, while his services are put in requisition by hundreds of persons. His situation is peculiar and strange; he cannot freely sympathize with another's being, because he finds his own exertions so put to the stretch.
And after all, the world is nothing but a wheel; in its whole periphery it is every where similar, but, nevertheless, it appears to us so strange, because we ourselves are carried round with it.
What I always said has actually come to pass: in this land alone do I begin to understand and to unravel many a phenomenon of nature, and complication of opinion. I am gathering from every quarter, and shall bring back with me a great deal,--certainly much love of my own native land, and joy to live with a few dear friends.
With regard to my Sicilian tour, the gods still hold the scales in their hands: the index still wavers.
Who can the friend be who has thus mysteriously announced? Only, may I not neglect him in my pilgrimage and tour in the island!
The frigate from Palermo has returned: in eight days she sets sail again. Whether I shall sail with it, and be back at Rome by Passion Week, I have not as yet determined. Never in my life have I been so undecided: a trifle will turn the scale.
With men I get on rather better: for I feel that one must weigh them by avoirdupois weight, and not by the jeweller's scales; as, unfortunately, friends too often weigh one another in their hypochondriacal humours and in an over-exacting spirit.