296 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[Oct. 



Nothing is moved from its place ; Kr'auter adheres with pious rigour to 

 bis cliarge ; every leaf of paper — every worn out pen — remains on the 

 spot where it was when the poet fell asleep. The clock yet shows the 

 death-hour — half past eleven ; — it stopped then ; an accident almost mi- 

 raculous ! Near it, to the right of the window, stands the small writing- 

 desk, which the grandfather had made for his grand-children, who«, after 

 the death of the father, he took under his care and immediate protection. 

 Wolfgang was his favourite ; next to him, Walter ; Alma, for the sake of 

 learning to sit still, was obliged to pluck pieces of silk next to her brothers 

 at the little desk. There they are yel, in the envelope of a letter. 



Here every spot is holy ground, and a variety of objects, of which the 

 room is full, bespeak the being and actvity of such a mind. Around the 

 walls run rather low presses, iu which MSS. and other papers are kept; 

 above are shelves, in which Goethe placed the objects with which he 

 chanced to be occupied. The wood is browned by age, which is much 

 contrasted by a chest of drawers of well polished cherry-wood. It was 

 Goethe's daughter-in-law who gave this piece of furniture to him ; but 

 he could not long suffer its insinuating appearance, saying that it " dis- 

 tracted his thoughts." On that account also, there is no object of art in 

 the room, and the visitor seeks in vain for either a looking-glass or a sofa. 

 The latter he was not iu need of, on the account that he either stood or 

 moved about the whole day ; — he read standing, wrote standing, and even 

 took his breakfast on a high table. A similar conduct he recommended to 

 every one in whose welfare he took any interest, designating it as " life- 

 prolonging," — as well as the keeping of the hands behind the back, by 

 which, he added, " every narrowing and compressing of the chest is 

 avoided." 



Let 113 look a little more around this reverenced workshop of a great 

 mind ! There, at the left of the door, hang a sort of historical testimonials 

 of ctuiracter. Goethe had, at a certain period, written out one column in 

 which was a list of celebrated men and public bodies who, according to 

 bis opinion, promised to bear some political fruits ; and in the next column 

 was remarked, whether and how far they had yielded, iu subsequent 

 years, the result which had been anticipated. Of General Jackson, 

 Goethe had great hopes ; his behaviour, however, towards the Indians was 

 subsequently marked in black. 



A triangle of pasteboard, which he had himself made, and which occu- 

 pied the next shelves, is interesting as a sort of physiological jeu d'esprit. 

 Goethe wanted to illustrate to himself the action of the powers of soul. 

 The senses {Sinnlichkeit) appeared to him the basis of all ; to it, therefore, 

 the lower part of the triangle was devoted, and he painted it green. 

 Imagination received a dark red; intellect (Ffni«)i/4), a yellow; reason 

 ( Versiani/), a blue colour ; and occupied each one of the sides. Next to 

 it is a black hemisphere, also of pasteboard, on which, by the aid of a 

 glass ball filled with water, Goethe used to depict all colours of the 

 rainbow, in moments of clear sunshine. With this he could pass his time 

 for hours, especially after the death of his son, and he enjoyed great plea- 

 sure when the motley glare was developed right powerfully. And thus he 

 found thorough happiness whenever a phenomecon of nature came wilhin 

 bis reach. There stands the small bust of Napoleon, made of opal-llux, 

 which Eckermann brought him from Strasburg, and on which he found 

 confirmed some of the assertions of his doctrine of colours {Farbenlehre), 

 which filled him with extacy. A sealed bottle, which we see on one of 

 the tables, he exulted in like a child. There had been some red wine in 

 it, but had long been put aside, and Goethe once holding it towards the 

 light, saw therein the finest crystals of cremor tartari in the shape of 

 leaves and flowers. Like one inspired, he called those around him, or- 

 dered a candle, and put, with an air of festivity, his seal of arms on the 

 cork, that no chance should any more destroy this fine phenomenon. The 

 bottle henceforth never came out of his room. 



From Napoleon he received revealings in tlie sphere of light ; but he 

 acted also demoniacally upon him from that region, to which, it seems, no 

 ray of an upper world can ever penetrate. On the day of the battle of 

 Leipsig, a medallion of plaster of Paris fell from the wall ; a piece of the 

 margin was broken off, without, however, the portrait of the hero being 

 injured. There— in yonder recess— the image is yet to be seen, around 

 which Goethe, parodising Lucan, had placed in red letters : " Scilicet im- 

 tneoso superest ex nomine multura."* 



Thus stand's Goethe's house — tasteful, simple, as it behoves the man of 

 mind and letters. A monument of his life and being, it will remain a 



beacon for others, pointing out the track they have to follow ; although 

 there is no person living at present, to whom a similar public recognitioa 

 could, by any possibility, be ever decreed. 



J. L Y. 



* Of a great name much remains. 



ARCHITECTURAL RECOLLECTIONS OF ITALY. 



By Frederick Lush. 

 (Continued from page 26-1.) 



The depeodance of architecture upon painting and the composition of 

 forms, for its most beautiful and majestic effects, and consequently the ne- 

 cessity of studying its principles in the works of eminent painters, was 

 shown merely as an introduclion to, or foundation for any remarks which I 

 might subsequently make on the buildings of Italy ; for a knowledge of 

 these, forming the judgment to speak accurately upon the effects and com- 

 binations of visible objects, seemed the only sound basis for architectural 

 criticism. Writers on art have oftentimes evinced much classic learning, 

 and in some instances much taste ; but these are not necessarily connected 

 with each other ; in some they are found existing together, though in others 

 not. Wood and Forsjth,to whom the architectural world is indebttd for a 

 geat deal of learnmg, sagacity and research, iu some of their critiques, do 

 not appear to have alwajs appreciated those excellencies in Italian build- 

 ings which to others were so striking, so obvious, and so often praised. 

 The faculty of looking at them with a painter's eye, seemed to have been 

 deadened, or not called into exercise; the want of perceiving beauty 

 where it existed Ijing in the temperament or condition of mind under which 

 it was viewed, but sometimes bigotted and pre-conceived notions of what 

 was beautiful, and of a beauty altogether different, perverted their judg- 

 ment, and they have sentenced a budding, as ugly and monstrous, because 

 it was so contrary to their previously imbibed ideas, and exhibited that 

 which was totally at variance with the rules which guided the architects 

 of their own favourite edifices. In these cases, their opinions were pro- 

 duced not upon the feelings or impressions which the objects were capable 

 of making on their minds— or at least on minds not possessed of such an- 

 tipathies — but from iheir dissimilarity from other styles to which their 

 thoughts had been restricted. 



Now a building which has made a wonderful impression upon myself 

 and many other travellers, is St. il/arfc'a, Venice ; but this has been severely 

 censured both by Forsyth and W^oods. Here it is evident their senses 

 were blind to its magic effects ; to those effects at least which other minds 

 differently constituted have experienced. But because they saw beauty iu 

 one style of architecture, will thej deny it in another? The beauty of one 

 flower differs from that of another — but if we admire the loveliness of the 

 rose, are we to despise that of the lily 1 Because we have received one 

 kind of emotion in beholding the awful ruins of the Coliseum and have 

 felt the gloomy grandeur of Rome, is the heart incapable of admiring the 

 splendid and magnificent architecture of Venice? The grand simplicity 

 and convenience of the Colisco adapted for the cruel, barbaric daylight 

 spectacles of the Romans cannot be compared with any modern theatre, 

 nor can the massive architecture of the Romans, or the purity and sublimity 

 of the Greeks be placed in juxta-position with the rich fantastic Gothic of 

 Britain, Normandy, and Belgium. But can we infer that one is bad or 

 faulty, because it differs from the other ? 



It seems that the romance of St. Mark's could in no manner operate OQ 

 hearts steeled against its influence by a confirmed partiality for the stern, 

 grand, and diametrically opposite features of the Roman school. The 

 dislike to it extended so far with Woods, that in his " Letters," &c., we 

 find him, after blaming this thing and the other, suggesting such additions 

 and alterations as he thought would improve it. I believe it was the 

 same, or a similar person, who thought it a pity the Parthenon was not 

 surmounted by a steeple ! Here the greatest deformity was in the mind, 

 but none whatever in the work, its beauty, along with many another, being 

 that of fitness, whose necessary quality the change proposed would in- 

 stantly destroy. 



The architecture of St, Marks, beautiful in spite of its want of purity 

 and many anomalies, is, as an Italian says, loi grotesco,ma un groteaco 

 vmgnifico. Exhibiting a happy mixture of different styles aud ditierent 

 materials; making the rules which have limited the conceptions of all 

 other buildings only subservient to its purposes, it can have nothing in 

 common with them, and is put out of the scale of comparison. "There 



