''Il se sentit attiré vers le Midi, avec ardeur,' Madame de Staël says of him [Winckelmann]; 'on retrouve encore souvent dans le imaginations Alemandes quelques traces de cet amour du soliel, de cette fatigue du Nord, qui entraîna les peuples septentrionaux dans les contrées méridionales. Un beau ciel fait naître des sentiments semblables à l'amour de la patrie.'' (87) - later eds.: '"He felt in himself," says Madame de Stael, "an ardent attraction towards the South. In German imaginations even now traces are often to be found of that love of the sun, that weariness of the North (cette fatigue du nord), which carried the northern peoples away into those countries of the South. A fine sky brings to birth sentiments not unlike the love of one's Fatherland."

'There had been known before him,' says Madame de Stael, 'learned men who might be consulted like books; but no one had, if I may say so, made himself a pagan for the purpose of penetrating antiquity.'' (93)