DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22421#0065
TREASURES OF ART IN GREAT BRITAIN.
LETTEK I*
Passage to London — First impressions of the Thames and the City — Arrival
at the house of Mr. Edward Solly.
Only three days have passed since I wrote to you from Ham-
burg ; but what great and, to me, interesting and new scenes have
I enjoyed in that short time ! Before I went on board Chateauneuf
took me to the theatre, which, as you know, is built after a design
by Schinkel. The lightness and elegance of the proportions of
the spacious theatre gave me the agreeable impression of a fare-
well salutation of the arts on leaving home.
During the first part of the following day I remained well.
Walking on the deck, I considered with great interest sometimes
the motion of the wheels, which, with a loud noise, impelled us
rapidly forwards, and the heaving of the waves, and sometimes the
land as it gradually vanished behind us. Unhappily, in this my
first attempt "to navigate the watery paths," as Homer says, I
was made sensible, like most other persons, that the powerful sea-
god Neptune belongs to the family of yEsculapius, and in his own
element shamefully meddles in the profession of his relation, by
administering powerful emetics. I recollected that Goethe relates
how, in his voyage from Naples to Sicily, he experienced relief, in
similar distress, from a horizontal position ; and, lying down on my
bed in the cabin, found the remedy tolerably efficacious; but the
constant creaking of the vessel, with the motion of the engine, the
dashing of the waves, which tossed our boat like a nutshell, and
the sense of oppression which always seizes me in any confined
space, did not afford me a very agreeable substitute. However, I
was not without companions in misfortune : a corpulent English-
* This letter, in the original edition, was dated May 15, 183"). The large additions,
however, and complete revision of the present edition, having brought the work up
to the year 1853, the old dates have been expunged, though this letter and such other
portions of the first edition as have been retained still belong to that time.
vol. I. b
LETTEK I*
Passage to London — First impressions of the Thames and the City — Arrival
at the house of Mr. Edward Solly.
Only three days have passed since I wrote to you from Ham-
burg ; but what great and, to me, interesting and new scenes have
I enjoyed in that short time ! Before I went on board Chateauneuf
took me to the theatre, which, as you know, is built after a design
by Schinkel. The lightness and elegance of the proportions of
the spacious theatre gave me the agreeable impression of a fare-
well salutation of the arts on leaving home.
During the first part of the following day I remained well.
Walking on the deck, I considered with great interest sometimes
the motion of the wheels, which, with a loud noise, impelled us
rapidly forwards, and the heaving of the waves, and sometimes the
land as it gradually vanished behind us. Unhappily, in this my
first attempt "to navigate the watery paths," as Homer says, I
was made sensible, like most other persons, that the powerful sea-
god Neptune belongs to the family of yEsculapius, and in his own
element shamefully meddles in the profession of his relation, by
administering powerful emetics. I recollected that Goethe relates
how, in his voyage from Naples to Sicily, he experienced relief, in
similar distress, from a horizontal position ; and, lying down on my
bed in the cabin, found the remedy tolerably efficacious; but the
constant creaking of the vessel, with the motion of the engine, the
dashing of the waves, which tossed our boat like a nutshell, and
the sense of oppression which always seizes me in any confined
space, did not afford me a very agreeable substitute. However, I
was not without companions in misfortune : a corpulent English-
* This letter, in the original edition, was dated May 15, 183"). The large additions,
however, and complete revision of the present edition, having brought the work up
to the year 1853, the old dates have been expunged, though this letter and such other
portions of the first edition as have been retained still belong to that time.
vol. I. b