revolutionary attitude of the _Werther_ period,
gave way to one equally spiritual and intellectual, but more
temperate.

This transition is clearly seen in the Swiss letters. In his first
Swiss travels, 1775, he was only just free from _Werther_, and his
mind was too agitated for quiet observation:

Hasten thee, Kronos!...
Over stock and stone let thy trot
Into life straightway lead....
Wide, high, glorious the view
Gazing round upon life,
While from mount unto mount
Hovers the spirit eterne,
Life eternal foreboding....

Far more significant and ripe--in fact, mature--are the letters in
1779, shewing, as they do, the attitude of a man of profound mind, in
the prime of his life and time. He was the first German poet to fall
under the spell of the mountains--the strongest spell, as he held,
which Nature wields in our latitudes. 'These sublime, incomparable
scenes will remain for ever in my mind'; and of one view in
particular, over the mountains of Savoy and Valais, the Lake of
Geneva, and Mont Blanc, he said: 'The view was so great, man's eye
could not grasp it.'

He wrote of his feelings with perfect openness to Frau von Stein, and
these letters extended farther back than those from Switzerland, and
were partly mixed with them.

From Selz:

An uncommonly fine day, a happy country--still all green, only
here and there a yellow beech or oak leaf. Meadows still in their
silver beauty--a soft welcome breeze everywhere. Grapes improving
with every step and every day. Every peasant's house has a vine
up to the roof, and every courtyard a great overhanging arbour.
The air of heaven soft, warm, and moist. The Rhine and the clear
mountains near at hand, the changing woods, meadows, fields like
gardens, do men good, and give me a kind of comfort which I have
long lacked.

The pen remains as ever the pen of a poet, but he looks at
Switzerland now with a mature, settled taste, analyzing his
impressions, and studying mountains, glaciers, boulders,
scientifically.

Of the Staubbach Fall, near Lauterbrunnen (Oct. 9th, 1779):

The clouds broke in the upper air, and the blue sky came through.
Clouds clung to the steep sides of the rocks; even the top where
the Staubbach falls over, was lightly covered. It was a very
noble sight ... then the clouds came down into the valley and
covered all the foreground. The great wall over which the water
fal