TO PROFESSOR ZELTER OF BERLIN.
Rome, 16th June, 1831.
My Dear Professor,—I have been wanting to write to you for a long time to give you an account of the music of Holy Week, but my journey to Naples came between, and then, as I wandered here and there on the mountains or gave myself up to looking at the sea, there was no reasonable time for writing at all. That was the cause of my delay, which I must beg you to excuse. Since Holy Week I have heard nothing that impressed me. In Naples it was the most ordinary stuff; so I have nothing to write to you of the last few months but of that Holy Week alone, and of that I think I have forgotten nothing, nor ever shall. I have already written something to my parents of the effect it produced on me as a whole, and they will have told you of it. It was well that I set myself to listen to it all quite quietly and critically, and also well that, in spite of this, even while awaiting the commencement of the service, a sense of solemnity and reverence came over me. Such a mood, I believe, is essential if one is really to enter into anything new, and, indeed, I lost nothing of the effect of the whole, though I
