There never
has been the Greece that we conceive; we see it under the soft, purple
veil of distance, like an Alpine valley embraced by cloudy mountains;
but there was the same coarse dust and _debris_ of ordinary life
there as with us. The true Arcadia lies beyond the grave. The
collection of pictures is rich in historic curiosities - valuable as
marking the progress of art. One Claude Lorraine here was a matchless
specimen - a perfect victory over all the difficulties of green
landscape painting.
LETTER XLV.
WITTENBERG.
MY DEAR: -
I am here in the station house at Wittenberg. I have been seeing and
hearing to-day for you, and now sit down to put on paper the results
of my morning. "What make you from Wittenberg?" Wittenberg! name of
the dreamy past; dimly associated with Hamlet, Denmark, the moonlight
terrace, and the Baltic Sea, by one line of Shakspeare; but made more
living by those who have thought, loved, and died here; nay, by those
who cannot die, and whose life has been life to all coming ages.
How naturally, on reaching a place long heard of and pondered, do we
look round for something uncommon, quaint, and striking! Nothing of
the kind was here; only the dead flat of this most level scenery, with
its dreary prairie-like sameness. Certainly it was not this scenery
that stirred up a soul in Luther, and made him nail up his theses on
the Wittenberg church door.
