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It would be difficult for a person of moderate emotions or well-disciplined temperament to conceive the thrilling sense of power and freedom with which Goethe started on his journey from Strasburg to Frankfort. Now at last the whole world was before him, and he was tied down by no bond of duty to the period of his immaturity: now he was free to develop all that he felt engendering and growing within him. Progress and activity, -- with those two watchwords, what could he not dare and accomplish? He experienced, moreover, a purely animal sensation of delight in his liberty, as he traveled over the rich and beautiful country, reveling in the brilliant sunshine, the large air, and the sweet smells of the spacious fields.
There was something contagious in the reckless exhilaration of his spirits, and all who met him were impressed by the spectacle of this handsome, happy youth, gifted with an organization of mind and body in which one could scarcely detect a flaw, and seeming to enjoy unbounded delight in the mere consciousness of existence.