Dr. Münter is here on his return from his tour in Sicily--an energetic, vehement man. What objects he may have, I cannot tell. He will reach you in May, and has much to tell you. He has been two years travelling in Italy. He is disgusted with the Italians, who have not paid due respect to the weighty letters of recommendation which were to have opened to him many an archive, many a private library; so that he is far from having accomplished his object in coming here.
He has collected some beautiful coins, and possesses, he tells me, a manuscript which reduces numismatics to as precise a system of characteristics as the Linnæan system of botany. Herder, he says, knows still more about it: probably a transcript of it will be permitted. To do something of the kind is certainly possible, and, if well done, it will be truly valuable; and we must sooner or later enter seriously into this branch of learning.
I am now beginning to revisit the principal sights of Rome: in such second views, our first amazement generally dies away into more of sympathy and a purer perception of the true value of the objects. In order to form an idea of the highest achievements of the human mind, the soul must first attain to perfect freedom from prejudice and prepossession.
Marble is a rare material. It is on this account that the Apollo Belvedere in the original is so infinitely ravishing; for that sublime air of youthful freedom and vigour, of never-changing juvenescence, which breathes around the marble, at once vanishes in the best even of plaster casts.
In the Palace Rondanini, which is right opposite to our lodgings, there is a Medusa-mask, above the size of life, in which the attempt to portray a lofty and beautiful countenance in the numbing agony of death has been indescribably successful. I possess an excellent cast of it, but the charm of the marble remains not. The noble semi-transparency of the yellow stone-approaching almost to the hue of flesh--is vanished. Compared with it, the plaster of Paris has a chalky and dead look.
And yet how delightful it is to go to a modeller in gypsum, and to see the noble limbs of a statue come out one by one from the mould, and thereby to acquire wholly new ideas of their shapes. And then, again, by such means all that in Rome is scattered, is brought together, for the purpose of comparison; and this alone is of inestimable service. Accordingly, I could not resist the temptation to procure a cast of the colossal head of Jupiter. It stands right opposite to my bed, in a good light, in order that I may address my morning devotions towards it. With all its grandeur and dignity it has, however, given rise to one of the funniest interludes possible.