The question, ‘Is a place beautiful?’ paled beside ’Is its soil clay?’ ‘Are its rocks quartz, chalk, or mica schist?’ The problem of the archetypal plant was more absorbing than the finest groups of trees.  The years of practical life at Weimar, and, above all, the ever-growing interest in science, were the chief factors in this change, which led him, as he said in his Treatise on Granite,

from observation and description of the human heart, that part of creation which is the most youthful, varied, unstable, and destructible, to observation of that Son of Nature, which is the oldest, deepest, most stable, most indestructible.

The enthusiastic subjective realism of stormy youth was replaced by the measured objective realism of ripe manhood.  Hence the difference between his letters from Switzerland and those from Italy, where this inner metamorphosis was completed; as he said, ’Between Weimar and Palermo I have had many changes.’

For all that, he revelled in the beauty of Italy.  As he once said: 

It is natural to me to revere the great and beautiful willingly and with pleasure; and to develop this predisposition day by day and hour by hour by means of such glorious objects, is the most delightful feeling.

The sea made a great impression upon him: 

I set out for the Lido...landed, and walked straight across the isthmus.  I heard a loud hollow murmur—­it was the sea!  I soon saw it; it crested high against the shore as it retired, it was about noon and time of ebb.  I have then at last seen the sea with my own eyes, and followed it on its beautiful bed, just as it quitted it.

But further on he only remarks:  ‘The sea is a great sight.’  Elsewhere, too, it is only noticed very shortly.

Rome stimulated his mind to increased productiveness, and, partly for this reason, he could not assimilate all the new impressions which poured in upon him from without, from ruins, paintings, churches, palaces, the life of the people.  He drew a great deal too; from Frascati he wrote (Nov. 15th, 1786): 

The country around is very pleasant; the village lies on the side of a hill, or rather of a mountain, and at every step the draughtsman comes upon the most glorious objects.  The prospect is unbounded.  Rome lies before you, and beyond it on the right is the sea, the mountains of Tivoli, and so on.

In Rome itself (Feb. 2nd, 1787): 

    Of the beauty of a walk through Rome by moonlight it is
    impossible to form a conception without having witnessed it.

During Carnival (Feb. 21st): 

    The sky, so infinitely fine and clear, looked down nobly and
    innocently upon the mummeries.

In the voyage to Sicily: 

At noon we went on board; the weather being extremely fine, we enjoyed the most glorious of views.  The corvette lay at anchor near to the Mole.  With an unclouded sun the atmosphere was hazy, giving to the rocky walls of Sorrento, which were in the shade, a tint of most beautiful blue.  Naples with its living multitudes lay in full sunshine, and glittered brilliantly with countless tints.

and on April 1st: