.....

"Such a fresh glance into a new land in which we are to abide for a time has still the peculiarity, both pleasant and foreboding, that the whole lies before us like an unwritten tablet. As yet no sorrows and joys which relate to ourselves are recorded upon it; this cheerful, varied, animated plain is still mute for us; the eye is only fixed on the objects so far as they are intrinsically important, and neither affection nor passion has especially to render prominent this or that spot. But a presentiment of the future already disquiet the young heart; and an unsatisfied craving secretly demands that which is to come..."

Goethe, as he, upon his arrival, contemplates Strasbourg from the Cathedral. From his autobiography, english translation, 1882, vol I page 296.