Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1506

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Although Winckelmann was very happy in his association with the natives, he suffered all the more annoyance and tribulation from strangers. It is true that nothing can be more exasperating than the usual stranger in Rome. In every other place the traveler can better look out for himself and find something suitable to his needs; but whoever does not accommodate himself to Rome is an abomination to the man of real Roman sentiment.

The English are reproached because they take their tea-kettles everywhere along with them, even dragging them to the summit of Mt. Ætna. But has not every nation its own tea-kettle, in which its citizens on their travels brew a bundle of dried herbs brought along from home?

Such hurrying and arrogant strangers, never looking about them, and judging everything in accordance with their own narrow limitations, were denounced by Winckelmann more than once; he vows never to show them about, and yet finally allows himself to be persuaded to do it. He jests over his inclination to play the schoolmaster, to teach and to convince, and indeed many advantages accrued to him through the association with persons important by reason of their rank and services. We mention only the Prince of Dessan, the Crown Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Brunswick, and Baron von Riedesel, a man who showed himself quite worthy of our friend in his attitude toward art and antiquity.