This may be the place to add a few words about Catholicism.  Soon after its origin and promulgation, the Christian religion, through rational and irrational heresies, lost its original purity.  But as it was called on to check barbarous nations, harsh methods were needed for the service, not doctrine.  The one Mediator between God and man was not enough, as we all know.  Thus arose a species of pagan Judaism, sustained even to this day.  This had to be revolutionised entirely in the minds of men, therefore Lutheranism depends solely on the Bible.  Luther’s behaviour is no secret, and now that we are going to commemorate him, we cannot do so in the right sense unless we acknowledge his merit, and represent what he accomplished for his own age and for posterity.  This celebration should be so arranged that every fair-minded Catholic should be able to participate in it.  The Weimar friends of art have already prepared their designs for the monument.  We make no secret of the matter, and at all events hope to contribute our share.

Jena, February 16, 1818.  You know Jena too little for it to mean anything to you when I say that on the right bank of the Saale, near the Camsdorf bridge, above the ice-laden water rushing through the arches, I have occupied a tower which has attracted me and my friends for years.  Here I pass the happiest hours of the day, looking out on the river, bridge, gravel walks, meadows, gardens, and hills, famous in war, rising beyond.  At sunset I return to town.

In observing atmospheric changes I endeavour to interweave cloud-forms and sky-tints with words and images.  But as all this, except for the noise of wind and water, runs off without a sound, I really need some inner harmony to keep my ear in tune; and this is only possible by my confidence in you and in what you do and value.  Therefore, I send you only a few fervent prayers as branches from my paradise.  If you can but distil them in your hot element, then the beverage can be swallowed comfortably, and the heathen will be made whole.  Apocalypse, last chapter, and the second verse.

Vienna, July 27.  Pyrotechnical displays seem to me the only pleasure in which the Austrians are willing to dispense with their music, which here persecutes us in every direction.  In Carlsbad a musician declared to me that music as a profession was a sour crust.  I replied that the musicians were better off than the visitors.  “How so?” asked he.  Said I, “Surely they can eat without music.”

The good man went away ashamed, and I felt sorry for him, though my remark was quite in place, for it is really cruel in this manner to torture patients and convalescents.  I can, indeed, endure much, but when, after coming from the opera, I sit down to supper, and am annoyed instantly by the strains of a harp or a singer, jarring with what I have been hearing, it is too much; and, wretch that I am, I am forgetting that this scribble is also too much.  So farewell.  God bless you!