How beautiful and splendid is it now that you should lay the foundations for your latest composition (Review of Goethe’s Italian Travels) in that happy soil, that you should seek to explain me and my endeavors at that laborious time, and that attentively and lovingly you should have traced back that which in my efforts might seem incidental or lacking in coherence, in sequence, to a spiritual necessity and to individual characteristic combinations.

Here, now, there would be a most beautiful theme for discussion by word of mouth.  It is impossible to commit to writing how I was mirrored in your words; how I received elucidation on many things; how, at the same time, I was again challenged to reflect on the many enigmas that ever remain unsolved in man, even as regards himself; and seriously to reflect on the inner nexus of many qualities which cross in the individual and which, despite a certain degree of contradiction, are intertwined and united.

Here belongs preeminently my relation to plastic art, to which you have devoted an attention so deserving of thanks.  It is marvelous enough that man feels an irresistible impulse to prosecute what he cannot achieve, and yet that by this very process he is most essentially furthered in his actual achievements.

That, however, this long-delayed letter may no further lag behind, I shall close, but shall, nevertheless, at the same time inform you that, while I uttered the sentiments written above, I once more returned to your letters, and by seeing myself mirrored in them afresh was challenged to new considerations, and was powerfully reminded of those times when, united in spirit though not in body, we, already advanced in years, enjoyed with the strength of youth and with delight those idyllic days.

For six months [32] now my son has shared in the exuberance with which, on the priceless peninsula, nature and centuries have, with most marvelous intricacy, amassed and destroyed in life, created and demolished in the arts, and played with the fates of men and nations.

He went by steamer from Leghorn to Naples, where he may be even yet, a decision which, once carried out, has brought very special advantages.  He found Professor Zahn there, and himself, under this scholar’s guidance, completely at home both above and below the ground.

Since now you, too, my dearest friend, are accustoming yourself to dictating, send me in a happy hour of leisure often a tiny friendly word, so that, from time to time, I may more frequently and concretely be aware of the coexistence which has already so long been vouched us on this terrestrial ball.  I tear myself unwillingly from this communication; how much I have to say floats before me, but at this time I shall delay only to bless the fortunate star which at this moment rises over you and your estimable brother.  May what has so charmingly been inaugurated endure for the enjoyment of rich results to you and to us all!