If,
however, one takes one's stand on the ruined walls of the imperial abode
and looks out over the broad plains of the Rhine valley, which at that
time were already cleared land, while the chain of hills along the left
bank, which are so monotonous at present, were still covered with woods,
then one can estimate to some extent the delight caused by the view
spreading before the gaze of the emperor. His castle at the edge of the
wood, as it were on the borders of night and old barbarity, looked out
upon the open, and under the windows stretched the broad agricultural
land of the Rheingau, from whose virgin soil the first vines were just
beginning to sprout, adorned with new settlements and roads--surely a
royal spectacle for the eye of those days. It was, so to speak, the
symbol of the universal historical mission, not only of the emperor but
of the entire age--namely, to root up, to clear, to procure light. And
thus the same landscape which today is considered, if not exactly
commonplace, yet at the most idyllic, may have appeared imposing and
imperial to the people of a thousand years ago.
It is because of this varying eye for natural scenery--which is the eye
of generations succeeding one another in the course of history--that
landscape painting, which conveys to us the most trustworthy information
of this variation of vision, does not belong solely to the sphere of the
esthetician; the historian of civilization must also study this most
subjective of all plastic representations.
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