intercourse with nature!” What I then felt is still present to my mind:  what I said I know not how to recall.  Thus much, however, is certain, that the undetermined, widely expanding feelings of youth and of uncultivated nations are alone adapted to the sublime, which, if it is to be excited in us through external objects, formless, or moulded into incomprehensible forms, must surround us with a greatness to which we are not equal.

All men, more or less, have such a disposition, and seek to satisfy this noble want in various ways.  But as the sublime is easily produced by twilight and night, when objects are blended, it is, on the other hand, scared away by the day, which separates and sunders every thing; and so must it also be destroyed by every increase of cultivation, if it be not fortunate enough to take refuge with the beautiful, and unite itself closely with it, whereby both become equally undying and indestructible.

The brief moments of such enjoyments were still more shortened by my meditative friend:  but, when I turned back into the world, it was altogether in vain that I sought, among the bright and barren objects around, again to arouse such feelings within me; nay, I could scarcely retain even the remembrance of them.  My heart, however, was too far spoiled to be able to compose itself:  it had loved, and the object was snatched away from it; it had lived, and life to it was embittered.  A friend who makes it too perceptible that he designs to improve you, excites no feeling of comfort; while a woman who is forming you, while she seems to spoil you, is adored as a heavenly, joy-bringing being.  But that form in which the idea of beauty manifested itself to me had vanished into distance; it often visited me under the shade of my oak-trees, but I could not hold it fast:  and I felt a powerful impulse to seek something similar in the distance.

I had imperceptibly accustomed, nay, compelled, my friend and overseer to leave me alone; for, even in my sacred grove, those undefined, gigantic feelings were not sufficient for me.  The eye was, above all others, the organ by which I seized the world.  I had, from childhood, lived among painters, and had accustomed myself to look at objects, as they did, with reference to art.  Now I was left to myself and to solitude, this gift, half natural, half acquired, made its appearance.  Wherever I looked, I saw a picture; and whatever struck me, whatever gave me delight, I wished to fix, and began, in the most awkward manner, to draw after nature.  To this end I lacked nothing less than every thing; yet, though without any technical means, I obstinately persisted in trying to imitate the most magnificent things that offered themselves to my sight.  Thus, to be sure, I acquired the faculty of paying a great attention to objects; but I only seized them as a whole, so far as they produced an effect:  and, little as Nature had meant me for a descriptive poet, just as little would she grant me the capacity of a draughtsman for details.  This, however, being the only way left me of uttering my thoughts, I stuck to it with so much stubbornness, nay, even with melancholy, that I always continued my labors the more zealously the less I saw they produced.