CHAPTER I.: dresden—leipsic.

After having travelled on foot, and generally alone, through part of France, Italy, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and the south of Germany, in the years 1815, 1816, 1817, I arrived at Dresden in the early part of the month of September 1817. It was only during my residence in this town that I acquired a sufficient knowledge of the German language to enable me partially to comprehend German literature, and to converse with Germans. At this period, therefore, my remarks on Germany commence.

The first house I entered in Saxony, after coming from Bohemia, gave me a favourable idea of the Saxons. The floor was sanded; the tables, though made of fir, and edged with copper, like those which are most frequently in use, were kept washed, and looked white; the pewter pots were shining and clean, and a neat-dressed woman was sitting and sewing. All this was extremely different from any thing I had seen in passing from Vienna to Presburg, to Olmütz, Prague, and to Saxony. Through the whole of this route, the floors appeared rarely swept. It was nearly impossible to tell of what wood the tables were made without scraping them; and Bohemian landlords, who are proverbial in their own country for fatness and insolence, were equally dirty and disgusting. Much of Bohemia is a naturally fertile and fine country, but the people are yet so little acquainted with comforts, that they have hardly any other beds for themselves than straw; and the traveller, even in the large towns, is rarely provided with any other than straw strewed in the public room. This may possibly arise from a great quantity of foot travellers, Jew merchants, and mechanics, who are not rich enough to pay for beds, and the innkeepers, accustomed to them only, provide none. All travellers seem subject to the same inconveniences, those who come in carriages and those who come on foot, both men and women. Oftentimes have I slept in these inns when the room has been full of the kind of persons mentioned. The motley group, while a three-cornered lamp, similar to those seen in old pictures, was suspended in the middle from the ceiling, reminded me sometimes of companies of pilgrims, and sometimes of hordes of banditti.

The situation of Dresden is singularly pleasing. It is built on the Elbe, which, from its windings, disappears both above and below the town; and it flows so smoothly as to resemble a lake more than a river. On the north side there is a ridge of sand hills, which have all been planted, within these few years, with pines, or some shrubs, and in many places with vines. These improvements were, in general, effected by the late Earl of Findlater, who bought some property here, or by the late minister, Count Marcolini. On the south side of the town there is also another ridge of gentle hills, which, extending both above and below it to the Elbe, and there apparently joining the opposite sand hills, shut up Dresden in a long oval vale. The mountains of Bohemia are seen at a distance; a great variety of walks, public gardens, beautiful scenery, and a well-cultivated neighbourhood, leave nothing in point of situation to be desired. The two parts of the town, situated on the opposite sides of the Elbe, are united by a long bridge, over which the people all pass on one side, and repass on the other. There are very few good buildings in Dresden; the house appropriated to the meeting of the States, in the Pirna Street, or Parliament house, a little palace in the great garden, some distance out of the town, which was uninhabited, and falling to ruins, the Catholic Chapel, and the Japanese Palace, which is now the public library, were all that gave me any pleasure, or seemed worthy of notice. The gallery of paintings, the academy of arts, the treasury, or place where the jewels are kept, with the other curiosities, are too well known to permit me to say anything new of them, and I shall therefore content myself with merely noticing such little customs as I observed peculiar to the people.

A public library, which is open every day except Sundays and holidays, is hardly a peculiarity, for such libraries exist in most of the capitals of Germany, but it deserves mentioning, as a very useful thing. Any books it contains are given on being asked for; and there is a small well warmed room to sit in to read. A recommendation to the librarian, or a respectable citizen answering for a stranger, procures him the further advantage of taking books home with him. All the respectable inhabitants have the same privilege; few of them, therefore, frequented the library, but the number of their servants who came daily for books shewed that they were in the habit of reading. The sovereigns have, by other means, such as establishing schools of all kinds, provided for the education of the people; and if they are not learned, ingenious, skilful, and energetic, it is not for want of the means of school instruction. Dresden, however, abounds with learned and clever men, with societies of poets and poetesses, among whom the ancient German custom of recitation is a favourite amusement, and with artists of all descriptions, who, without being greatly distinguished, pass their lives in the pursuits of science, or in the enjoyments of a cultivated taste.

The progress of the people in political knowledge, and the interest they take in political matters, is in some measure shown by there being in the town two different places where both French and English newspapers, with most of the German political and scientific journals of the day, are found. One of these is a club. It unites conveniences for playing billiards and other games, with books and newspapers, and to visit it a stranger must be introduced, but this is easily accomplished, through the English envoy, or some acquaintance. The other is a speculation, a complete cabinet literaire, such as are found in Paris and in other cities of France, to which people subscribe for a sitting, for a month, or for a year. The former of these places was much frequented, the latter hardly enough to pay the expences. The Times, the Morning Chronicle, and the Courier, might be read here, and were a good deal read by the inhabitants; and as the Edinburgh Review was to be had at the royal library, an Englishman could keep in Dresden on a level with the course of events, both literary and political, in his own country. English and French newspapers, and periodical works, are now found in most of the large cities of Germany, and are much read by the Germans, which shows how much the communication between the nations of Europe is improved, how much the people of one country now feel interested in the political events of every other, and that there is some approximation making, by a rapid interchange of knowledge and sentiment, and opinion, to abolish all that is hateful and odious in national distinctions. The philosopher rejoices at this, but it takes much from the interest of travels; and the inhabitants of Europe can now be better known to each other through the rapid medium of the post and newspapers, than through the more expensive, and perhaps less interesting, means of travellers.

The inhabitants of Dresden are very fond of amusements, and much of their time is passed in walking to public gardens, in listening to music while they sip their coffee, in playing billiards, chess, and cards, and in conversation. The men all smoke, and the women all knit, in public places; and the latter are so accustomed to the fumes of tobacco, that they seem to think them not an inconvenience. They often remained in crowded rooms, from which the smoke obliged me to retire. A pipe or a segar forms part of a German; and a most elegant-dressed young man, while he is making his best bow to his mistress, puts the burning tobacco under her nose, and lets her inhale at once flattery and smoke.

A great amusement of the citizens was shooting at the popinjay. A large pole, like the Maypoles of England, stands in the neighbourhood of most of the places of public entertainment. It is fixed in a sort of box, like the mast of a small vessel, so that it can be let down till it is horizontal, and elevated without much trouble. At the top a thing is placed resembling the Austrian eagle, but resplendent with feathers and gold. Those marksmen are considered the most skilful who shoot the head off. A cross-bow, but fashioned like a musket, is employed to shoot with; and it is loaded with a small iron bolt, by a person hired for the purpose of loading it, who is, in general, the owner of the cross-bows. The citizens continue to smoke their pipes, ask is it my turn, talk over their shots, and when the turn comes to any one, he lays the ready-loaded cross-bow on a bar of wood, about forty yards distant from the pole, and tries to hit the wooden bird. He gives himself no other trouble; a boy looks after the bolts as they fall, and brings them back. It is an amusement that demands no labour and no thought; it allows of the continued enjoyment of smoking, and furnishes materials for interminable talk. This is a specimen of the manner in which the Germans shun active exertions. An amusement that requires some more exertion is nine-pins, which is also very common; but this admits of continued smoking, and demands no other labour but bowling. Dancing is the only amusement of the people that requires bodily exertion; and from their manner of dancing, which is rather slow, even this does not require much. Waltzing probably requires more.

One of the things that most early and most constantly attracted my curiosity in Dresden, was the custom of young lads singing psalms on Sundays and feast days about the town. Pious men have bequeathed funds to give a number of boys, who are, at the same time, choristers at the different churches, a cocked hat, a black scarf, and a suit of clothes, on condition of their entertaining the inhabitants with sacred music. Bands of ten or a dozen, with one for a leader, each dressed in black, with a cocked hat and a scarf, march slowly about the town, and, stopping at every second or third house, sing a psalm. I am myself too much averse to actions done from improper, or I may call them false motives, not to find this custom rather ridiculous. The proper motive why men should sing or pray, is a correspondent state of mind, but this was singing for hire,—in fact, a sort of mockery of worship. With this small abatement, of pleasure from not liking the reason of the thing, I found this singing very agreeable. The shrill, clear voices of the youngsters, sounding, in a clear frosty morning, through the streets, though they could not be compared with the perfect music of the Royal Catholic Chapel, had something in them of simplicity that pleased my untutored ears nearly so well as the multiplied tones and warblings of the whole royal orchestra.

During my residence in Dresden, the return of the hundredth year of the Reformation was celebrated. The festival lasted three days. The churches were all hung, according to the taste of the clergymen, with flowers made into wreaths, festoons, and crowns. Orange trees were borrowed from the royal nurseries, and various shrubs and leafy ornaments were placed in the-churches, so as to give them a very gay and pleasing appearance. Religious worship, with appropriate psalms and hymns, took place on each of the days while the churches were thus ornamented, but the crowd was always so great, it was nearly impossible to get in. I unfortunately heard nothing, for even the very porches were full. At the end of three days, a great number of the singers, accompanied by persons carrying torches, and pictures of Luther, with banners, on which various mottos were inscribed, and followed by a great multitude, paraded through the streets of the town, and came at length to the Old Market, a large clear space, surrounded by houses. Here all the multitude could assemble; and here, while the singers formed a circle, and continued singing, all the torches were thrown together, and made a splendid bonfire. The crowd, the houses, the singers, were all distinctly seen by the glare, and there appeared to be nothing wanted but that the whole multitude should have sung so well as these young men, to have made it a most imposing spectacle. In this point it failed. Nothing can equal or compensate the enthusiasm,—the heart swelling effects of a multitude of voices; and if this ceremony were intended to fix any thing eternally on the people, they should themselves have been previously instructed to join in it. But it was supposed the people could not sing so well as the choristers, and the mighty effect of their voices was sacrificed to a little scientific music. By the last glare of the bonfire the last psalm was sung, and the people all retired quietly to their homes. There were no great preparations on the part of the police, and yet there was no quarrel nor disturbance.

The same epoch was celebrated by similar festivals all over Germany, which argues, among the generality of the people, no indifference for religion. Medals also, and pictures of Luther, with the other reformers, were exposed for sale, and great numbers of them were bought and worn. Some of the medals were of silver for the rich, and of baser metals for the poor, so that all might be supplied. Luther and the reformers can only be considered as men who propagated in the world a number of moral and useful truths. So have the Bacons, the Newtons, and Lockes; and, while we celebrate the birth-day of Mr Pitt and Mr Fox, when it is perhaps impossible to ascertain any one benefit they conferred on society, we suffer those who have instructed us, and rescued us from error, to pass unhonoured; and Luther is probably only commemorated from his being a sort of leader to a large body of men whose interest it is that his tenets should be perpetuated and obeyed.

At the latter end of October, when this festival was celebrating, festivals of other kinds were common in Germany. On the eighteenth of this month, the anniversary of the battle of Leipsic, the students of the different universities of the whole of Saxony, in all about one thousand, assembled at the Wartburg, which had once long been the refuge of Luther, and there they burnt, in solemn procession, several emblems of some things they disliked, such as the tail worn by the Hessian soldiers, the false breasts of the Prussians, an Austrian corporal’s stick, the article of the congress of Vienna, which decreed the partition of Saxony, and some books, among which was the History of the Germans, by Kotzebue. They heard speeches from some of their leaders, are said to have made vows to die for the freedom of Germany, and to have burnt the hats which they had waved as they made these vows, that they might never again serve any ignoble purpose. They were accompanied by a great many spectators, who participated in their enthusiasm; and thus a very general spirit was excited for what is supposed to be the freedom of Germany. At Dresden this event was the subject of much conversation, and there were few persons who did not express great joy at the conduct of the students, and great hope of future benefits from them. Much controversy arose. Some professors were censured for the part they took in this procession; and the whole excited a vast deal of interest throughout Germany.

The inhabitants of Leipsic commemorated the same day in a different manner. They marched to the field of battle in great numbers, and there, forming a ring, kneeled down, and celebrated with prayers the victory that had delivered Germany, though it divided their country. Whatever the monarch of Saxony might be, the people were strongly opposed to Buonaparte and the French; they were animated by true German principles; and, unless nations are to be considered as the property of sovereigns, it was they, and not their monarch, who ought to have been thought of at the congress of Vienna; and they ought in justice, so well as in mercy, to have been spared that pain many of them expressed at the partition of their country.

Another procession, which deserves to be mentioned, was the funeral of a young lady. It was attended and followed like a funeral in England; a great number of people were, however, present, and amongst them, all the servants of the family. She was the daughter of a respectable innkeeper, and had enough of celebrity, and was enough respected, to bring a crowd together. The hearse was little more than wheels, and an appropriate place for the coffin to rest on, over which a handsome pall was thrown. The burying-ground was out of the town, near the Elbe, and the soil so sandy, that the grave was boarded up to keep it from filling before the corpse was deposited. Nothing worthy of mentioning happened till the moment of interment, when the lid of the coffin, which had never been screwed down, was lifted off, and the body, the colours just beginning to fade, was shewn to the surrounding spectators. She was in the stage,

and neatly dressed and ornamented with flowers, she looked but as in a sweet undreaming bridal sleep. Every body had before wept, but at this moment tears gushed from the eyes of all the spectators; the women and girls who were present all sobbed as if she had been their dearest relative; the servants all wept bitterly, and there was no spectator who was not affected. These expressions of grief and agony continued till the coffin was fastened, and the earth covered it for ever. Many of the younger part of the females present exclaimed, Oh, why am I not also dead? why can I not be buried? I have frequently heard young women utter similar expressions when they were melancholy, which, with them, was not unfrequently the case. In the spring of life, when their hearts should be open to unknown but hoped enjoyments, and to all the charms of nature, they frequently talked of the grave, and said there was nothing they wished for so much as death. They oftentimes sang a well known German song, called the Song of the Grave, Das Lied des Grabes, descriptive of the peace to be found there, and rarely without sighing as they repeated the last lines, “That was the only door through which the unhappy went to rest.”

This trait of sympathy may, however, be set off by the following: I one day entered a room belonging to a tailor I employed, where one of his children was lying, in the arms of a most unseemly death. Its limbs were ulcerated, it was half naked, flies buzzed about it, its throat was convulsed, and it looked shocking and disgusting. Yet its mother received me with smiles, and followed me out of the room with common unmeaning smiles, spoke to me of the weather and some other trifles, and when I pointed to the child, said, Yes, it was dying, in the same manner, and with the same tones, she had spoken to me of the weather. The father continued at his work, and seemed to have little other feeling but pleasure the child was to be taken away. This indifference is disgusting, but it is probably better than the overwrought sensibility which admits for a time of no consolation for irremediable, and yet common calamities. A person of my acquaintance, who had written works on botany and mathematics, and was considered rather a clever man, spoke to me one day of his marriage, and lamented it only because a wife cost him money, and he regretted his single state only as a cheaper one. The connection with women is so easy to be had, and so easy put off in this country, that no person appears to regard it as the great source of all the better affections, and of an attachment to home. Marriage is spoken of as a matter to be decided solely by its money advantages.

The following little incident may also be mentioned as illustrative of character. Near Dresden, and below the bridge, there was one of those floating mills lying on the Elbe, which are common on many of the rivers of Germany and France. They generally consist of one large flat boat, or of two boats fastened together, and on them a house is built, which contains the machinery for grinding. They are moored in the rivers, and the current gives motion to the water wheel, the axis of which is in the boats. This one on the Elbe was carried away from its station by a large boat loaded with stones running foul of it. Every person near ran to give assistance; some brought ropes, and some boats, and while nothing was neglected that could assist in stopping it, there was no noise, and very little unnecessary bustle. The only exclamations noticed were, that the owner sometimes said, It is bad for me. There was a great deal of difficulty in stopping so large a machine; the people on board threw out huge stones and anchors, but they were not heavy enough to hold it against the power of the stream; at length, when it had floated nearly a mile, a rope was conveyed to it from the shore, and it was stopped. This was certainly an event calculated to excite curiosity, and would, in many places, have produced much bustle and confusion. The Germans prevent these by thinking and regularity, and, while they possibly do more than some of their noisy screaming neighbours, they are sometimes thought stupid and dull from their possessing the virtue of self-command.

Brides in Germany carry with them to the house of their husband, what is called “der Brautschmuck,” which consists in clothes, fine linen, and jewels, proportionate to the wealth of the parents. On one of the princesses of Saxony being married to the son of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, all the linen clothes and ornaments, even to a chemise and a ring, which she was to take with her, were spread, before she went away, in the chambers of the palace for public inspection. The crowd to see the adornments of the royal bride was excessive, the centinels could scarcely keep the people back, and no conversation was heard amongst the women for several days but on the fineness of the linen, and on the beauty of the dresses and ornaments.

In Dresden, so well as in other parts of Germany, Christian names are common, which frequently recall those days of English fanaticism, when Praise God, and Hold-fast-the-Faith, were the baptismal names of our ancestors. The Germans are undoubtedly too much accustomed to these to remark them as peculiar, but a stranger smiles as he reads Gott-lob, Gott-fried, Gott-furcht, Gott-lieb, and many other such combinations, expressing love God, fear God, praise God, God peace, &c. &c.

It might be considered as unpardonable if I were to take my leave of Dresden without mentioning, that on a hill on the south side of the town, about three quarters of a mile distant from it, is the place where General Moreau was standing when he was wounded, and that on this spot a small monument has been erected to his memory. It is merely a square block of granite, on which some instruments and ornaments of war, sculptured in stone, are placed, and it bears, if my memory is correct, the simple inscription, To the Memory of General Moreau. Zum Andenken General Moreaus. A few trees are planted round it, and the spot commands a very good view of the town.

In consequence of the Earl of Findlater having given the property, which I have before mentioned he had improved, to a German, who is known in Dresden by the name of Secretary, which title he derived from his services to the Earl, it is now converted into a place of public entertainment; and, from its commanding a most beautiful view of the Elbe, it is a very fashionable one, and is much frequented. It still bears the name of Findlater, and I notice the circumstance, to remark the curious coincidence of a British nobleman giving his name to a German tavern.

The following is a brief account of the present extent of Saxony, its form of government, and other little statistical notices, chiefly taken from the work of Dr George Hassel.

Its extent is 1352 square miles; it contains 1,232,644 inhabitants. It has preserved most of its manufacturing districts, and the richest of its mines, but it now produces very little corn, and contains no salt. It is divided into the following circles: 1. Of Meissen, containing 300 square miles, 297,945 inhabitants. 2. Of Leipsic, 276 square miles, 206,917 inhabitants. 3. Of Erzegeberge, 410 square miles, 459,264 inhabitants. 4. Of Voigtland, 132 square miles, and 88,639 inhabitants. A small part of Merseburg and Naumburg, 14 square miles, and 10,000 inhabitants. A part of Upper Lusatia, 220 square miles, and 169,879 inhabitants. The monarch is Catholic, the greater number of the inhabitants are Protestants, following the confession of Augsburgh, but other religions are fully tolerated. Jews, however, are tolerated only in Dresden and Leipsic, and have not the rights of citizenship. The difference between the ständes, or different classes of society, is strongly marked, and they consist in great nobility, in small nobility, in learned men, in citizens, and in peasants, who are yet in Upper Lusatia in a state of servitude.

The revenues are derived from domains, under which term are comprehended several estates—from regalia, such as mines, forests, tolls, the post, &c., and from several taxes, the principal of which, however, is a land-tax. The amount of the whole does not now exceed from eight to ten millions of florins, or L. 1,000,000 Sterling. The debt amounts to 50,000,000 florins, or between L. 5,000,000 and L. 6,000,000 Sterling. The taxes are unequally levied, the greater and small nobility being almost totally exempted. The army may amount to 18,000 men.

The monarch is bound by law not to alter the religion of the people. He must call on the states for their advice when he wants to levy new taxes, or to make new laws. The domains and regalia are not all in the hands of the monarch, many still belong to the great nobility. Some of these, as the House of Shönburg, have the right to tax their vassals, paying a third of the tax to the crown, and this house also possesses the power of remitting all punishments less than death. With these exceptions, and if followed up they comprise a large portion of the power of the state, this monarch has, however, all the remainder of it in his own hands. The different provinces, or circles, have different constitutions and privileges, which yet actually exist, though they are abolished in name. The great division is in united and not united provinces. Out of the ständes or different classes of the united provinces, the general assembly of the states for the kingdom is collected. The persons composing the states are distinguished into those who directly, and those who indirectly, form them. The first are divided into four circles, those of Meissen, of Leipsic, of Erzegeberge, and of the Voigtland.

The different classes living in these circles, who directly form the states, have a personal right to appear at the assembly of the states, while those who indirectly form them, the prebends of Meissen, and the university of Leipsic, have this right by virtue of their office. All the ständes of these provinces and circles, with the clerical establishments, are now united into a General Assembly of States for the whole of Saxony. The king has the power of calling them together when and where he will; generally he calls them together every sixth year. This assembly is divided into three classes; the first is composed of the clergy, and the great nobility; the second of the small nobility, Rittershaft; and the third of deputies from cities. The second class, or Rittershaft, are possessors of noble properties, and they are only permitted to attend personally when their forefathers have been enrolled in the College of Heralds for eight generations. Among that part of this class of the nobility who do not boast of eight ancestors, there are other distinctions. Some hold their property independent of the jurisdiction of the local magistrate, and subject only to the jurisdiction of the Hofgericht; this property is called Schriftsässigen Güter, —the property of the others is subject to the jurisdiction of the local magistrates; this is Amtsässigen Güter. The former, the possessors of Schriftsässigen Güter, may appear personally; the latter, the possessors of Amtsässigen Güter, must elect deputies from the class which boasts eight known generations of ancestors. Among the holders of those noble properties, which are independent of local jurisdiction, Schriftsässigen Güter, there is yet a distinction into old and new. The latter may appear personally at the assembly, but they receive no diet money. This second class of the states, the Rittershaft, appoints, from out of the whole body, a small and a large committee, whose resolutions may be set aside or confirmed by the whole, but who, in general, manage the whole business for the class. These two committees, and the rest of the small nobility, are called the three colleges of the assembled smaller nobility. The deputies of the cities, who are the third class, have, in like manner, their small and large committees.

The first class makes representations for itself, and deliberates for itself on the royal propositions, so far as they concern their own interest only. The nobles of this class form a power almost independent of the monarch. The clergy and the university of Leipsic, who form part of the first class, are dependant on the crown. The other classes, in like manner, deliberate apart, and when each of them has come to a decision, they confer together, and make a resolution in common. These resolutions, with the king’s consent, become laws, though they do not affect the first class, and are published under the name of the Land Tags-abschied. So far as I have been able to comprehend the constitution of this assembly, it appears little capable of transacting business; and, though it was sitting when I was at Dresden, I heard of nothing amongst the people but expressions of impatience that it might soon separate, as it cost the country a considerable sum, most of the members being paid. It is the ancient parliament of the land, and has become a burthen, because it has never been reformed.

There are two distinct codes of laws in Saxony. The first is composed of various provincial laws, and much of it is taken from the famous Sachsen-spiegel. The second is the code of Augustus of Saxony. Recourse is also had to the Roman and the Canon law to explain the others, and each particular province has laws that are proper to it alone; the laws are uncertain, the processes long and costly, and it remains with the advocates to let them go to a conclusion when they please.

The different departments of the executive government are administered by different ministers, as in other European countries. For the administration of justice, there are the following tribunals: The Court of Appeals is the highest court, and, in cases of dispute relative to the property of the crown, this decides even on the rights of the sovereign. It is composed of one president, one vice-president, six noble counsellors, and twelve counsellors not noble, who are the judges. The Oberhofgericht at Leipsic is a court for particular persons, generally, I believe, for nobles. The Schoppenstuhl, which is composed of some of the members of the faculty of jurisprudence at Leipsic, and the whole of that faculty, form separate courts of appeal. The Berg Schoppenstuhl at Freyberg is the court for the miners, and all that relates to them, and at Bautzen is a court for Upper Lusatia. In each province there is a sort of local government, to whom the police and smaller jurisdictions are committed.

Saxony boasts one university, at Leipsic, royal schools at Meissen, Wurzen, and Grimma, with several lyceums, town schools, and village schools. There is an academy of arts at Dresden, and regular schools at Freyberg, for the instruction of miners. The whole of the education is under the direction of the chief consistorium; but the manner in which it is extended amongst the people will be better explained in the chapter on Education.

The spirit of every government, directed by one or a few persons, and not by the great mass of the society, must always depend on the dispositions of the ruling individual; and the aged sovereign of Saxony has been, through a long life, a mild and a quiet king. Hence, with his government few people are discontented, and, in fact, every body whom I spoke with praised and pitied him very much.

The same circumstance has a great effect on the manners and morals of a whole people. And the decencies, the regularity, of the present court, even if they should be somewhat hypocritical, while they contrast finely with the libertinism of a former period, are tending to restore to the Saxons that regard for decency of which the voluptuous court of Augustus must have partially deprived them. The brutality of this man, which seems to have been all that could outrage morality in the unrestrained indulgence of strong passions, is often dignified by the name of brilliant fetes; and the giants’ hall is pointed out in the palace at Dresden, as the place where they were chiefly given, and the cup is still preserved at Moritzburg, a hunting castle at a little distance from Dresden, out of which he drank large quantities of wine to the health of his beautiful countess, and to the destruction of his own. Surely to denominate the lusts of this man brilliant is a misnomer; it, is, indeed, an untruth which men are obliged to tell, in order to justify to themselves the weakness of reverencing and honouring such persons. The value of truth never appears so great as when it is applied to the deeds of men, and we shall have put on the three league boots of moral improvement, when we have learnt to give the actions of monarchs their right names. The brilliant fetes, as they are called, of Augustus of Saxony, ought to be named bacchanalian carousals, that would have disgraced a vulgar trooper, and that destroy the vigour both of body and mind.

I mixed so much with the inhabitants of Dresden as my imperfect knowledge of the language of the country, and other circumstances, allowed. The kindness and gentleness of the people pleased me. The city contains many amusements, and has many charms. At the moment I left it, on the morning of the 23d of December, it snowed, and the weather was cold, and thick; nothing was to be seen, either behind as a remembrance, or before to cheer me as a hope; the gloom added to my regret. I was scarcely out of the town before every object but the trees by the road side were hid from my view, and I felt perfectly alone. Regret was in some measure augmented by the approaching festivities, from which I was running away, when people were collecting in the town from all the neighbourhood to celebrate them. All my acquaintance exclaimed, What, going before the festival? where will you celebrate it, then? A stranger, I replied, could have no festivals; they demand a union of friends and relations, of the endearments of love and of home, and the wanderer, the sojourner of a moment, may have a thousand wild and tumultuous pleasures in the endless variety he sees; his every day may be a day of enjoyment, but while he wanders, he can have no festivals with friends. Christmas is here, as in other countries, a family festival, occasioned by a religious ceremony; relations and friends meet and are happy in each other’s company, the time is passed in merriment and gladness, and the joy is attributed to religion. Such feelings, and such, perhaps, mistaken expressions for them, are common to all people. There are other feelings, different at different periods of life, which it is curious to see spread themselves over a stranger. The elderly people ask him if his parents are yet living, the middle aged if he is married, and the young, what his beloved thinks of his absence. But the most general questions, so general, indeed, as the appetites and desires which dictate them, are always of the prices of commodities, of the cheapness or dearness of food and clothes.

Despondency seldom lasts long when any thing is to be performed, and the good wishes of my acquaintance, as I remembered them, served to lighten my regret. My reveries were soon disturbed, and my reflections driven into another channel, by the multiplied greetings I received from the peasants, men and women, chiefly women, however, who were carrying in baskets on their backs, or wheeling in barrows, the produce of their little gardens or labours, to market. With each of these I exchanged a courteous good morning, and the momentary disposition of the person saluting me might be guessed from the salutation. Some were light of heart. They had possibly received good Christmas gifts, or had good ones to give. They did not feel their loads, and their greeting was rapid and cheerfully given,—danced out as it were; others seemed to feel their load too heavy, and so much occupied by it as hardly to have time to say good morning; others had not yet shaken off the drowsiness of night, and, half asleep, grumbled out their salutation; others, and these were the greatest number, seemed to think of nothing but how softly they could say good morning, in order to convince you of that kindness which is so general a disposition of the German women. If the reader have lolled all his life in a silk-lined coach, or always lived in the parlours or saloons of polished society,—if he have never been solitary in the world—he will be unable to appreciate the pleasure derived from this passing salutation of peasant women. To me it gave animation, and seemed, when combined with the good wishes for fine weather and pleasant journey, which yet sounded in my ears, to be paramount to an influence on the seasons. Though they could not make the snow cease to fall, the heavens bright, or the wind less piercing, yet they gave an elasticity of thought which made the snow and the cold disregarded, and I mused, with great pleasure, over a variety of circumstances, as I splashed along in the dirt, without taking “heed to my steps.” As I walked farther from the town, I ceased to meet any more women. It was yet dark, and I was left to my own reflections. They were not unpleasant. I had been told in Dresden I was always finding out the advantages of whatever happened; that I was a Candid. The thought did not displease me, and, to justify my conduct, I sought now for the advantages of candidism. It makes men content with the evils which they cannot remedy, while it encourages no supine submission to them. I thought I did not walk so well as formerly, and began to reflect I was growing old, and candidism made me find the advantages of age. Hitherto thought had been pleasing to me; I had a stock of materials for constant reflection, and there was no reason to believe, that, as vigour of limb decayed, vigour of thought might not remain. Former days recurred to me; I compared them with what I then enjoyed,—with what I might still hope to enjoy, and it appeared to me that youth had not been for me the happiest period of existence. It is perhaps a mistake to suppose that it generally is. When it is past, life no longer boils and bubbles; it no longer sparkles nor ferments,—but it no longer sours, nor leaves, when the fermentation is over, a filthy scum. It is a disposition similar to candidism in all men, though perhaps disavowed, which makes them find out the advantages of things as they are, and which suggests to the bishop a load of benefits to the rest of mankind in the dominion of the church, and to the statesman in arbitrary rule.

After some time the sky became clear, and I could see the surrounding country. A ridge of sand-hills was on my right, and the Elbe on my left. Small parallel walls are built along the sides of the hills, to prevent the earth from being washed down, and to which the vines are at the same time trained. In the spaces between the walls they are tied to little stakes planted in the ground. At this season they were all cut close, and laid down under the ground, or covered with straw. Those against the houses were all carefully tied up in matting. At a distance of eight miles from Dresden, these hills extend down to the Elbe, and as there appears a continuation of them on the opposite side of the river, it looks as if the river had here forced its way between them. At this point also, the granite rocks which form the masses of these hills, whose surfaces are covered with sand, shew themselves to the very top. It is said that some of the granite hills of Germany, particularly the Harz, are in a constant state of decomposition and destruction, and, probably, most of the high peaks of the world are gradually crumbling away. At least, I amused myself with thinking so, though I shall not defend my speculations against either the Huttonians or the Wernerians. They may not contain quite so much truth as theirs, but they were probably equally useful, for they afforded me a moment’s amusement, and the amount of the utility of all geological speculations is the amusement they afford to otherwise unemployed men.

Meissen was the first town I reached, and it lay on the opposite side of the Elbe. The bridge over the river here has rather a curious appearance, from having been built or repaired at three different times, and from uniting three different manners of turning arches. Some are turned after the common manner; there are wooden arches; and there are some, which are the most ancient, turned after the Gothic manner. Some parts of the bridge are of stone; some of brick; and some of wood. Meissen is the place where the Dresden china is manufactured, but it is not permitted to see the process without a particular permission from the superior inspector, which I did not seek. There is an exhibition-room, which everybody is allowed to enter. The old castle stands on a high projecting rock, that domineers over the river and the town, and it encloses the cathedral within its walls. This is frequently the case, and it is a type of the moral union of church and state. Protection and favour are given for the obedience which the church inculcates. I dined at Meissen, and, on entering an inn, a barber offered his services. I declined them; they were accepted, however, by several persons, and he scattered his soap-suds about, shaving them in the same room where several people were dining.

The dialect of Meissen is celebrated as one of the purest of Germany, but, unfortunately, the purity does not extend to the people. On pursuing my journey, I had a peasant for a companion, who had been at Meissen, and was carrying home a finely painted red, yellow, and green distaff, and a spinning-wheel, as Christmas-presents for his wife. I hardly understood his language, it was so different from the German to which I had been accustomed, and therefore our conversation was very limited. He had some visits to pay in his way home, and we soon parted.

Soon afterwards I came to a close carriage, with the fore-wheel broke. It had been supported, and, while another wheel was putting on, which had occupied two hours, none of the persons in it had descended. A most elegant woman was standing up in it, and looking out of the window; she laughed and joked with her companions within, whom I could not see. To her I paid my compliments of condolence, which she seemed very little to need. She was rather merry than sad. Two servants, who had been riding outside, had got down, but apparently only to light their pipes with greater ease. One of them was doing nothing but smoking, and the other, while he held fast hold of his pipe with one hand, was assisting the wheelwright to put on a new wheel with the other. German patience is a virtue, for it diminishes unavoidable evils.

A man I overtook told me, in very few words, that he was a deserter from the army; that he was tired of being a soldier at twopence-farthing per day, and that he was returning to his friends, who lived in what was at present the territories of Prussia; and there he hoped to escape Saxon punishment. I hardly knew how to reconcile the fear he expressed of being taken with his confession to a stranger, unless he had found, from experience, that every person not immediately interested in stopping him helped him to escape. His appearance had not suffered by his not having ate any thing that day; it was healthy, and might have been envied him by a glutton. He had looked at the lady in the broken carriage, which he had also seen, with the eyes of a man;—he called her a charming woman, eine charmante frau.

In the course of the day I saw several waggons carrying colonial produce and English manufactured goods to Bohemia and Poland, and some loaded with hops, that had come all the way from Prague, and were going to Hamburgh. I asked why they were not sent by the Elbe? They were afraid of its freezing. This was possible, but there is something wrong in the management of this commerce, when, with the Elbe and the waters united with it, extending from beyond Prague to Hamburgh, so costly a conveyance as land-carriage is employed, for so cumbrous an article as hops.

I reached a small town called Oschatz, to sleep, and found a comfortable inn and a good bed. Some roast goose with apple-sauce, a very common dish in Germany, was given me for supper, and, after my day’s walk, which was thirty-four miles, I went early to bed. The greater number of the small towns of Germany I had hitherto seen, but more particularly those of Bohemia, had all a large square in them, of which the town-house is the most conspicuous part. Throughout that Catholic country, some saint or pillar of clouds, with a gilt cross, or a column composed of three smaller ones twisted together as a type of the Trinity, is the great ornament of the middle. Oschatz had the square and the town-house, but the gilded cross and twisted pillar were wanted. The gable-ends of many of the houses were placed towards the street, and their fronts were often built up, in very fantastic shapes, so as to conceal the roofs. The town-house was a good specimen. The upper part of the front, instead of forming an angle like the gable end of the roof, diminished in steps, on each of which was placed some little ornament, such as a weathercock, or a little image. On the upper point was also a figure, and the whole end full of windows, resembled nothing but the little German toy-houses, which have been made in imitation of such old-fashioned buildings.

I know not if it has been remarked that the pediments of Grecian architecture were intended originally, like the ornaments of German houses, to conceal the roof. The columns that supported them were used instead of a wall, and, in a warm climate, formed the only entrances and only doors of the temples. The porticoes of Grecian architecture, its pediments and columns, were useful, but modern imitation puts up pediments where there are no roofs to conceal, and uses columns where there are also doors and walls. In matters purely of taste, there is little danger in indiscriminately imitating good models, because no other effect is to be produced than to give pleasure to minds which have been probably formed by the very models which are imitated; but in building there is always a purpose to be answered, and, when we know this, there is a positive standard by which to try the merits of the execution. Every thing in architecture ought to have its use. Most of the ornaments of modern buildings are, however, perfectly useless, and, as they are nothing but imitations of what were originally useful, they may be safely pronounced to generally sin against good taste. The roofs of all the old houses in Germany are immoderately high; some of them are, indeed, higher from the top of the walls to the top of the roof, than the walls are from the ground; but these were originally so built from a necessity, for a strong covering against the snow. The less flat the roof was, so much the better for this purpose, and this occasioned it to be carried to a most unseemly height.

In the morning of the 24th coffee was brought me early, and I left Oschatz at six o’clock. The weather was clear; it was moonlight, and freezing very hard. A carriage, or a gelegenheit, as those carriages are called which take the chances of the road, had left the inn a little before me. I soon overtook it, and never again saw it. Another left a village called Leppa, six miles on the road, at the same time that I passed it, and this, without performing so long a day’s journey as I did, reached Leipsic but a very few minutes before me. These sort of carriages do not change their horses on their route, and an ordinary foot traveller may always, therefore, beat a gelegenheit. Many female peasants were going into Oschatz, as into Dresden when I left it, and with all these I exchanged the usual good-morning.

I reached the little town of Wurzen to dinner. Here, as at Meissen, there is a castle which embraces with its walls the principal church.

It was Christmas eve,— heilige Abend, —and there was a fair at Wurzen, as there is at all other German towns at this time of the year, that every body may supply themselves with those things which they wish to give their friends. The square was filled with stalls and booths, and with people who had come from all the surrounding villages to buy their Christmas presents. On one side of the butchers’ stall there was a place where fine leather gloves, and black leather breeches, the common wear of the peasantry, were sold, and on the other a booth in which caps and ribbons were displayed. Another contained iron, copper, and tin household utensils, and close to it were dolls and ornaments for children. There was all around a great display of fine pipes, and of earthenware, and the old women sat on the stones, huddled in their cloaks, selling their butter and cheese, in the neighbourhood of the dram-shop and the gingerbread-booth. It was a mixture of all wares, but the weather was too cold to admit the people to have any other enjoyment than drinking spirits.

The little river Mulde has to be crossed by a ferry on leaving Wurzen, and several people who were going over waited with great indulgence while the ferryman went into the house and lighted his pipe, and warmed himself thoroughly; in short, they had patience for nearly a quarter of an hour; and, while standing in the cold was very unplesant to me, it did not bring forth one word of complaint or of impatience from any of them. Bodily exertion is here repressed by opinion, which is not formed from any conviction that either evil or pain is caused by exertion, but from labour being united with poverty, and idleness with nobility and wealth. The common people keep one another in countenance in wasting their time. “Be not so industrious,”—“you are labouring too hard,” are salutations to the man breaking stones on the road, who leaves off his work and rests on his hammer, while he exchanges some words with every passing foot-traveller.

My walk was not absolutely solitary, for I met or overtook several people, but these latter were all going so slow, that I was afraid, if I walked with them, of arriving late at Leipsic. The snow was lying on the ground without completely hiding it; the roofs of the houses were also whitened by it. The sky was dark; the weather hazy; nothing at a distance could be distinctly seen; there was nobody labouring in the fields; a few women were carrying baskets from one village to another. There was nothing to see or to do but to while away the time by some of those dreams of airy nothing, which seem bounteously given to amuse us when we are destitute of employment, and to alleviate our sorrow when we are visited by calamity. Imagination and memory are always ready to depict the future or recall the past,—to combine, separate, magnify, or diminish, all we see, or have ever seen, or heard, or read. Poets may well praise their harps, for thinking or dreaming is a most glorious amusement.

At length I overtook a youth, very shabbily dressed, smoking out of a fine new pipe. I concluded the pipe was a Christmas present; but such people have no secrets, and, from a paucity of knowledge, they always talk of themselves. I was soon informed both of his history and the history of his pipe. He was a turner, and turners in Germany are the great manufacturers of the stems and bowls of the pipes most commonly in use, and he had laboured assiduously, in his spare hours, to make a new one for himself. He was then going to Leipsic, to carry a lamp he had made for one of the children of a sister who was there married, in return for the festival boots and stockings his sister had given him. The world is full of calamity, or, at least, men are full of complaints; and this youth lamented his sufferings very bitterly. His father was reduced, by his property having been twice burnt, from employing six workmen, and sending his wife regularly to Leipsic fair to sell pipes, to depend entirely on chance sale, and on his own and his son’s labours. The great evil, however, of which he complained, was the want of enjoyment, as he designated his inability any longer to participate in all the amusements and dissipations of richer companions. Unfortunately, all men give these alone the name of enjoyments, and many of our better pleasures are stigmatized as labour. He could go very seldom to the music-club, and was sometimes obliged to work on feast-days. For what trifling gratifications is wealth desired by all classes of people!

From knowing the great partiality of the Germans to music, and how extensively it is cultivated by them, I was not surprised to hear this ragged lad talk of music-clubs in villages, nor to hear him regret that he was no longer able to frequent them. Music is to the Germans what moral and political reasoning is to us;—the great thing to which all the talents of the people are directed; and it is as natural that Handel, and Haydn, and Mozart, and Beethoven, the greatest of modern composers, should have been Germans, as that Hume, and Smith, and Paley, and Bentham, and Malthus, the greatest reasoners and political writers of the age, should have been Britons.

On my way I was frequently followed by children who were passing from village to village, though they were too shy to speak, and stopped, almost frightened, whenever I spoke to them; yet they were so fond of something like society, that they constantly ran to keep close to me. Two or three gentlemen’s houses lay near the road, but, in general, the country, where cultivated, was not adorned. The season was unfavourable for seeing it, and it was not, therefore, right to judge of it. We reached Leipsic at five o’clock, and I had probably walked thirty-six miles. The great market-place at Leipsic, like that of Wurzen, was full of booths, where all things proper for Christmas-gifts were to be bought.

CHAPTER II.: leipsic—berlin

It is customary in Germany for the innkeepers to keep a book in which the names and conditions of their guests, where they come from, and where they are going to, must be written. Exclusive of passports being inspected at the police, this book, or extracts from it, must be regularly sent there; and the landlords are therefore particular in requesting every stranger to fill up its columns with all the proper information. At Leipsic, the waiter, on coming to me for this purpose, was extremely slow to believe that I was an Englishman. He would rather believe me to be a Pole, an Hungarian, or a Swede. For this I was not sorry, for I know of no appearance which subjects a man to more unreasonable demands than that of an Englishman. At length he was persuaded, and he thought he was doing me a service while he mortified me by placing me, at the table d’hote, at dinner time, by the side of an English gentleman, who had come, some little time before, from Liverpool, with the intention of learning the German language at Leipsic, and who had yet learnt nothing, either of the language or of the people, but how to ask for segars, and how to smoke them, both of which things he did tolerably well.

From reading the work of Mad. de Stael on Germany, I expected to see there strange old towns, but nothing had hitherto realised the expectation. The market-place at Leipsic did it fully. Goethe described the houses of this city well when he called them “extraordinary shining buildings, with a front to two streets, inclosing courts, and containing every class of citizens, within heaven-high buildings, that resemble large castles, and are equal to half a city.” Roofs, which alone contained six stories of windows, with small steeples on their tops; circular houses, diminishing at every story, resembling the pictures of the tower of Babel; two or three towers, placed by the sides of houses, as if a staircase separate from the building had been provided for it; some fronts which had been modernized, and disfigured by a multitude of pillars and pilasters above pillars and pilasters; and the ancient gaol-like, but fantastical town-house,—made the market-place of Leipsic one of the most grotesque-looking spots I ever saw.

As it was Christmas-day, every place, even the bankers, was shut; the churches were crowded; and nothing was to be sold but spirits and medicines. At church, the music and singing seemed the most attractive part of the performance, and so soon as these were done, many of the congregation went away. The men generally stood, and the women sat. Amongst the uncovered heads of the former some emblems of German genius might be traced. The hair of the old men was smoothed down on the fronts and sides, as if it were ironed, while that of the young ones, combed up with their fingers à la François, was standing out in a circle, like a well-trundled mop. The former resembled the old plodding German; the latter was the type of the present German, flying off from most of the restraints of reason and of common sense.

Pictures are still allowed in the Lutheran churches, though no longer worshipped or prayed to, and one that I observed here, in St Paul’s church, deserves to be mentioned, as having one feature of common sense more than is usually seen in religious pictures. Many of their absurdities are truly ludicrous, and among them may be enumerated that the mother of the Saviour is always painted young. When she looks on her son on the cross, and when Jesus tells her, “Woman, behold thy son,” she is even then often represented as a blooming young woman. In this picture, and it was the only time I ever noticed the circumstance, she was represented as an elderly matron. The painter had not worked a second miracle, and bestowed with his pencil perpetual youth.

The manner in which the sacrament was administered was different from the manner of administering it in the church of England. A clergyman stood at each side of the altar; the persons intending to communicate were placed in a row on one side, and when the previous prayers had been recited, they walked, one after another, first to one clergyman, who had the consecrated wafers, and who repeated some words while he gave a wafer to the communicant. He received it standing, but bowing, and then passing behind the altar, came in front of the other clergyman, from whom he received the cup, and he then retired. The organ played and the choristers sang during the whole of the ceremony.

The university of Leipsic is at present chiefly famous for it medical studies, but the most celebrated man then there I understood to be a Professor Platner, ∗ who, though now old, had been formerly much distinguished as a moral philosopher, and as a very decided opponent of Kant. To a person without party feelings, it is difficult to decide which possesses least sense, the aphorisms of Platner or the categories of his opponent. This university was formerly much more famous than at present, and, under the guidance of the celebrated German poet Gellert, who was professor of belles lettres, it almost rivalled Göttingen. Its fame is much diminished. Gellert is buried here, and there is a monument erected in the church of St John to his memory.

I wished to have learned something more of the university, but it was holiday time, and there were no lectures then giving. As there was nothing particular to be seen in the town, had it not been that I had some business with a banker, I should have immediately pursued my journey, but I was obliged to wait till the morning of the 27th, and in the meantime to amuse myself as I could. In Dresden I had more money than I liked to carry with me, and I there wanted the banker to give me a bill on Hannover for the amount, but there was no communication between the two towns, and I was obliged to take a bill on Leipsic, and exchange that for one on Hannover. It was to procure this I was obliged to wait.

After dining, walking about the town, and looking at the lottery-house, as a decent little building near the market-place is called; at the old castle; at the statue of the present king of Saxony, standing on the former glacis; and after admiring the beautiful walk which has been made on the former walls of the town, I sought out one of the best coffee-houses, and found a large quantity of men assembled playing at billiards, drafts, and a game called locatelli, resembling, in some of its parts, our backgammon; but, to my surprise, there were no women present. In all such places I had seen before, some were in general present.

Chance afterwards made me a spectator of the funeral of a student, which was followed by nearly all the equipages of Leipsic. It was something extraordinary even for the inhabitants, and the severe cold did not prevent the people from looking out of their windows, while they leaned on the little cushions, which are placed on most German window-frames, for the more comfortable gratification of curiosity. Owners of carriages allow their servants to let them on such occasions as this, and the students, wishing to do honour to their departed comrade, had hired a vast number. The body, covered with a pall, was carried on men’s shoulders; a company of soldiers,—the deceased had also been in the army,—and a band of music playing slow and solemn tunes, preceded the corpse. The carriages and a great crowd of people followed it. I did also, but was not fortunate to get sufficiently near the grave to hear all the eulogium that was pronounced. It was delivered by one of the students with great solemnity, and reminded me of the eulogiums which are spoken in France over the graves of distinguished men. All that I learned was, that the dead man had served his country both with his pen and his sword, and that he would long be remembered by his brother students as an example of industry in his studies, and of urbanity and politeness in his conduct. His whole history was also given, but this was done in so low a tone of voice, that I could hear very little of it. He was of the middling ranks, not rich, and the present respect was paid only to his merit. Hymns were sung over the grave, music played; there was more than one speaker, and the student was, in all things, honoured as if he had been some respected chief. This is a specimen of the brotherhood and enthusiasm which prevails amongst the students of Germany;—no son of study in any other country could possibly expect such a convoy to his grave as accompanied this young man.

Most of the tomb-stones had crowns of laurel or flowers hung on them, and garlands decorated them, as is usual in German burial-grounds. Small shrubs and flowers were planted on the graves; some were carefully watered and cherished, and others were decaying or decayed, like the affections which planted them. A widower may attend his daughters to the grave of their mother, and a husband his wife to the tomb of their child, but it is chiefly women who thus honour the dead, and who always, at least, display most gracefully all our better affections.

In the evening, although it was Christmas-day, I went to the theatre, to hear some declamation, and to see one of those representations of pictures or statues, which are now become common in Germany. A sufficient number of performers, dressed in proper costume, place themselves at the end of the stage, in the attitudes in which the figures of any picture are placed. The stage is lighted in such a manner, on this occasion, as to throw on the performers that quantity of light and shade which the picture requires, or indeed possesses. Curtains or scenes proper for the perspective of the picture are used, so that a very accurate copy is represented in a short time. This mode is even adopted to realize the ideas of a painter. He imagines any subject, and he brings it at once to the test of proof by letting it be represented as a picture by living beings. The pictures pleased me; the declamation was not good. In Germany persons recite or declaim favourite pieces of poetry very frequently in public. On this occasion, the applause was immoderate, and I pitied a very good actress, and a very fine woman, a Miss Böhler, who was called forth to be thanked, because she was likely to mistake the vociferations of the students, who formed a large part of the spectators, for the impartial judgment of a discerning public.

It is not very amusing to walk about the almost deserted streets of a town, and, as the Germans consecrate three days to Christmas holidays, the 26th was also a festival, which kept me at the inn. As I was writing, a man entered my room, and begged something for the poor of Leipsic. The names of the donors, and the donations, were all inscribed in a book he brought with him, and he seemed to think it ought to induce me to give, that my name would then be written in the same book with the names of kings and princes. Gifts from their Majesties of Prussia and Denmark were recorded, and the name of the last person who had given any thing was that of a Polish prince. I was deaf to the charm. The man was displeased, and he put away his book with something like an expression of contempt for a person who refused to buy, on such cheap terms, the honour of letting his name be recorded in company with the names of monarchs. This manner of begging is practised in most of the large towns.

There are four fairs, small and large, held at Leipsic in the year, and, as I could not see one, nor get any valuable information as to the quantity of goods annually sold, I reasoned on them. Nothing but custom, and some original privileges, can have made Leipsic the seat of the commerce of the north of Germany, and of the fairs, particularly book fairs, for which it is famous. It has no advantages of situation like Magdeburgh, Dresden, or Berlin. The two former towns lying on the Elbe, and, therefore, having a water communication from Bohemia to the North Sea, and the latter connected with the North Sea, the Baltic, and Bohemia, by means of canals that join the Oder and the Elbe, have some local advantages much superior to those of Leipsic. Neither does it possess any superiority in literature. Where roads are bad, and communication difficult, and where land-carriage is impeded and uncertain, it is necessary men should be sure of finding a market for their goods before they send them away, and equally necessary that they who want to buy, should be sure to find what they want at some particular spot. Fairs were convenient for both parties, and certain privileges, such as “that all merchandize passing within sixty miles of Leipsic, was obliged to be carried through that town, that the merchants there might have the first offer of it;” ∗ and a central situation, when water carriage was little used, made Leipsic be selected. Warehouses once built, and capital collected there, it continued to be the resort of merchants when the conveniences of its situation were surpassed by those of other places. In Britain, where a facility of communication allows an immediate and rapid circulation of commodities, fairs, except those of mere amusement, are no longer numerous, and, wherever they are numerous, as in Germany, they are proofs of a backward state of commerce. As the means of communication are facilitated, fairs must diminish, and this is probably the cause why Leipsic is not now so prosperous as formerly, and why several people with large capitals are withdrawing themselves to other places.

In the evening I was disappointed at seeing, in the theatre, a sort of melo-dramatic version of the Tancred of Voltaire, in which there was nothing good but some splendid scenery; it gained the author, however, who was called for, very great applause. The spectators were prodigal of their thanks. Two performers were also called forth, probably from a wish to hear the neat ready-made speeches with which the honour conferred is most humbly acknowledged.

There is a great difference in the manners of the inhabitants of Leipsic and Dresden. Here no women are admitted into the pit; there this part of the theatre was chiefly occupied by them; there it was impossible to speak to any person who was not perfectly acquainted with most of the theatrical pieces and performers; here I addressed myself to two or three persons, without getting the little articles of information I wanted. There the occasional presence of the royal family prevented any thing like noise; here the pit had some resemblance to the same place in an English theatre; stamping with the feet, and striking with sticks, with other marks of impatience, were frequent. The mercantile pursuits of the inhabitants of one town, and the almost want of any other pursuit but amusement in the inhabitants of the other, gives a marked difference to their characters which the most casual observer may see. Those are more bustling, more busy, more energetic,; these more polite, more soft, and better informed in all the elegant parts of the literature of their country.

I observed also a marked difference in the conversation of the people at the table d’hote. They were mostly mercantile travellers, or merchants of the town, and we sat down, a large party, of at least sixty people. The conversation related chiefly to their amusements, and their engagements for other amusements, but mixed with this were matters of commerce, and some remarks on politics. In Dresden the conversation was more literary. With one or two young men I had some conversation about the German language; and when they knew I was going to Hannover, they said, in their Frankfort dialect, they should like to go also, for there people spoke the German language better than in any other part of Germany. The inn was a splendid one, and among the company I remarked some who sat in boxes at the theatre, and used an opera-glass, and drove their own carriage, yet they practised the dirty custom of picking their teeth with the table forks; one of them even used one to scratch his head. The former is a general custom, but it is done with some sort of shame, for the people who do it turn their heads on one side, and conceal their mouths with their other hand.

I left Leipsic on the following morning, December 27, at half past six o’clock. It had now frozen very hard for three days, and it then blew very cold from the north-west. The sky was all covered with a dense hazy sort of clouds, except on the western side, where a streak of silvery light lay on the horizon; it gradually became, as the day advanced, of a fiery red colour, and when the sun rose, it was lost in the general brightness. I had been told the road was good, but I soon found that I was indebted to nothing but the frost for clean walking. It was a mere track, and froze so hard in ridges and lumps, that it was like uneven stones. Close to the town, all the tracks that led to the neighbouring villages were equally well trodden with the principal track, and I very soon took a wrong one. I was obliged to call some people up, at a cottage, to shew me my way, which they did very civilly. As I got farther from the town, the bye-roads were no longer so good as the principal road, and all difficulty vanished. An easier way of travelling than walking soon suggested itself. At the side of the road ditches had been cut, which were then filled with ice, and on this I slid along gaily some miles.

I had nearly reached Duben, about twenty-two miles from Leipsic, and had seen no person on the road, when I met a man and woman, who both seemed so fond of talking, that one would never let the other speak without interruption. After the usual salutation of good-day, they immediately told me they were clothmakers, and were going to Leipsic fair. This sort of communicativeness is an apology for curiosity. It gives a right to demand, in return, some information of the person to whom it is addressed. My loquacious acquaintance were not slow in using this right, and I was obliged to tell them exactly who and what I was, where I came from, and where I was going to. They then both complained of the badness of the times; the woman exclaimed; the man reasoned; one said the raw material was dear, the other that cloth was cheap; and both agreed it was impossible to live. The man asked, was trade bad in England? Yes. He then took hold of the button of my great-coat, with all the familiarity of an old acquaintance, observing, at the same time, it was a very handsome Saxon brown, and whispered in my ear, as if he were afraid his wife might hear him, that all the evil was owing to machinery. I was of a different opinion, and, unwilling to lose an opportunity of opposing a prejudice,—for who does not think his own opinions true, and the opinions of other persons prejudices?—I began, in bad German, a description of a machine, and the effects of machinery; but though they were ready to talk, they were not ready to listen; and, allowing me to say but very few words, they asked me, had I found the road from Leipsic good? The woman said she was tired, and was fearful she should not be able to reach it. I pitied her, and we wished each other a safe journey, and parted.

The bitterest enemies, if they were to meet each other in a desert, and had not seen any other human being for some hours or days, would probably be enemies no more. There is a weaker feeling of this kind which makes strangers address each other on an unfrequented road. They ask some question which they could very well answer themselves, in order to begin a conversation, and they talk of any trifles rather than pass by a person without being friendly with him. I have often done this myself, particularly when bad weather, or a more unfrequented road than usual has made me see in every person a sort of companion. My clothmaking gossips had scarcely left me, when a tired man, who seemed to need rest, yet was afraid to take it, detained me a few moments to ask me half a dozen questions, and to tell me he was a Pole by birth, a barber or servant by profession, and that he was going to Leipsic to seek a situation. I told him how far he had yet to walk, encouraged him by telling him the roads were good, but counselled him not to walk to Leipsic that day. Foot travellers get many good wishes for safe journeys, which the people who ride in coaches never hear; and these wishes seem efficacious, for they give pleasure, and possibly make the journey good, by causing resignation to unavoidable evils.

I eat and rested at Duben, and had left it but little more than half an hour, when it began to snow. The road lay through a forest, and as it was little more than a track, I repented leaving Duben. As I marched slowly and carefully forward, deliberating if I should not turn back, I was overtaken by a woman, whose example, while she served me in some measure as a guide, shamed me out of my fears. We walked together, and I heard her history also, what family she had, what her employments were, and what she gained. She also lamented the hardness of the times, and particularly, that she had received no Christmas gifts from her husband. She soon left me to continue my journey alone.

Till I reached Duben, I had found the country open, and generally under the plough. It was now nothing but forests; and I resolved, in order not to lose my road, to take up my quarters at the first public-house I met with. The landlord, however, who, I understood from a man I met there, merely lived with the woman, who was the owner of the house, and had not put himself to the expence of buying the sanction of the priest, received me very uncivilly; and as I, at the same time, and by the same means, learnt there was another public-house which was much better, and not very far off, I set out to seek it, and got there safe before it was dark. My informant arrived shortly afterwards; he had met with a return carriage going to Berlin, and he had taken a seat in it, and wished to persuade me to accompany him. But I was clothed for walking, not for sitting still in a carriage on a snowy night. The roads were rugged and difficult to find, and I resolved to stay where I was.

In the course of the day I met a great many carriages and waggons going to Leipsic, and all the travellers, wrapped up in two or three great-coats, with their faces buried in caps and handkerchiefs, remained sitting in a sort of stupid indifference, just preserving animation enough to keep their tobacco burning, and their pipes from falling out of their mouths. Not one of them attempted to walk, though they might all have walked faster than their carriages, and might have kept themselves comfortably warm; but bodily exertion of all kinds is most certainly avoided by the richer classes of the Germans. This indolence may be partly accounted for thus: Their sleeping-rooms are generally heated, and the feather-beds, which are used as covers, always kept me—though, whenever it was practicable, I stripped myself to my shirt—in a constant state of profuse perspiration. The Germans, in addition to covering themselves with these beds, very generally sleep in night-dresses of flannel. In fact, they take nothing off but their upper garments, which are not unfrequently exchanged for some sort of jacket or gown. The beds and the rooms together make a sort of sweating bath, more enfeebling, probably, than a frequent use of warm bathing. The effects on myself were always refreshing, but weakening; they did away stiffness and fatigue, but sleep did not give me strength; and it is probable that the effects are the same on the Germans, and even much more powerful. The body is kept in a state of languid health, but all that freshness and vigour of limb which belongs to youth and a hardy people are destroyed. The Germans have no need of exertion, which we find so necessary, to promote perspiration, and therefore they have no wish for it, and do not take it. The character of men is the result of all they feel; and this state of the bodies of the Germans is undoubtedly a cause for some part of their character—for the placidness, stillness, and want of energy, which distinguish them from the other nations of Europe. It does not hinder them from thinking, writing, and compiling, day after day, week after week; in fact, it permits them to do all these more than any other people can, for they can do them constantly, and with little fear of injury to their health; but it deprives them of the need and of the wish for active exertion.

There were several other travellers collected in this inn besides myself, who were generally merchants or traders going to Leipsic. Some of them were Prussians, and resident at Berlin, who did not therefore listen with any patience to our landlord’s many complaints. Men complain much too often without reason, and those sufferings which an accurate observer may trace to have been caused by themselves, they attribute to the last remarkable event,—the appearance of a comet, the momentary passage of an army, or a change in the government. This country had been Saxon, and was part of that which the sovereign of Prussia took to himself; and our landlord, therefore, attributed all his sufferings to the change in his sovereign. Certainly his taxes being doubled was a just cause of complaint. He had served his country, he said, meaning Saxony, as a soldier, and his reward now was, that when his son was sixteen years of age, he would be taken for the Prussian armies. He could neither breed nor buy a good horse with security, for if the government wanted horses, it would take his. In short, he paid double the price for protection which he had formerly paid, and was now oppressed rather than protected. His complaints did not please our Berlin companions, and they soon turned the conversation on the marches and victories and glories of the Prussian armies. I then ceased to attend to it, or participate in it, and began nursing a child for my amusement. Its smiles and prattlings were more pleasing to me than all the thrice told, and trebly augmented, feats of Blucher.

German beds are generally small, without curtains, and several of them may therefore be conveniently placed in the same room; and not unfrequently there is, in small inns, but one apartment, as in this house, for several guests. On more than one occasion I have seen decent female travellers sleep in the same room with gentlemen, and from they never remarking that the practice was curious or offensive, it may be inferred that it is general. When I came into the house, the maid was dirty, and her clothes much neglected; I observed she was afterwards smartly dressed, and clean washed; her cheeks were glowing, and her eyes sparkling with animation and ardour. It was then ten o’clock,—I asked the reason of the change,—and was informed she was then going to a dance. I saw her again at four o’clock in the morning; she told me she had walked half a league, had danced till two o’clock, had then walked home, and had not been in bed. I regretted then and since I could not waltz, and that I did not know of the dance a little earlier, or I should certainly have asked permission to accompany her, to see if the joys of the German peasantry were not like those of other people.

In the course of the evening I saw a letter addressed to the landlord, inviting him to attend the baptism of a child, which I understood was born out of marriage. It excited my curiosity, and it was given me. The direction was, “To the well-esteemed and well-reputed Mr——my highly prized cousin, at Köplitz.” The letter began, “Well-esteemed and highly reputed Sir,—As it has pleased God to give us joy by sending us a son,” &c. It invited him to be godfather, and to participate in the feast which was to be given after the religious ceremony was over. And it ended by the lady subscribing herself, for it was sent by the mother only. “The very humble servant of her most honourable cousin.” Such a ceremonious mode of addressing people must be common, because the letter was partly printed. They are kept ready, and are filled up when wanted.

Much may be inferred from this little circumstance. Isolated instances of morals may deceive the traveller, but the opinions which are avowed with regard to them never can. When a married man with a family is invited to be the godfather of a child without any acknowledged father, when he accepts such an invitation, and speaks of having done so as a matter of common courtesy, and no extraordinary thing, it may with certainty be inferred, that to have an illegitimate child is no matter of reproach. With such opinions, it is not at all surprising that men and women should live together without the sanction of the priest. An instance was mentioned a few pages back. When such is the conduct of the middling and lower classes of society, it is a certain sign that it has long formed a part of the manners of the whole. In this part of the country, there were no great towns to corrupt the morals of the people, and such as they are, so they must have been, from the natural inertia of the peasants, for ages. Their manners only change with centuries.

The morning of the 28th was moonlight and clear, and I left the inn at five o’clock. The road was a mere track, through forests and in sand; and it was not very long before I became doubtful if I were going right, and applied at some cottages, where the people were just up, for directions. The woman gave me them very correctly and minutely, and, so far as they extended, I found my way very well. Women generally do this office of kindness better than men. The latter tell you to go straight forward, but the former always describe the road, the turnings you must take, and the marks you must attend to. This may be occasioned by their possessing a greater sensibility to little wants; by their more correct observation; or, by that less amiable propensity attributed to the sex, of loving to hear themselves talk. It is more likely, however, that their own difficulties have taught them the wants of others. They are accustomed to go from village to village, and from town to town, carrying loads, and till they have become thoroughly acquainted with the whole of the country, they must often have occasion to ask their way, and hence they learn accurately to inform other persons. Before reaching a little town called Kemberg, five miles from where I slept, I had again lost my way. It had snowed a little during the night, but not enough to hide the road, had one ever been properly made. An old man, who was sitting by his stove, mending his breeches, sent his son to put me in the right track. It was rather solitary to be thus wandering alone through forests and something like deserts; but the clouds, as they were blown swiftly past the moon, appeared almost company, and I was pleased it was the commencement rather than the close of day. At Kemberg I found a paved road, which lasted to Wittenberg, where I arrived at eight o’clock.

This town now belongs to Prussia: it formerly belonged to Saxony, and its fortifications have been repaired and strengthened as a frontier town to the former country. Its situation on the Elbe gives it advantages in this point of view, and ought to give it great trading advantages, but these are not known, or not profited by. Situated in a country that wants only industry to make it fertile, with both iron and coal in its neighbourhood, and with the high road from Berlin to Leipsic passing through it; it contains only 5000 inhabitants, and has no commerce whatever. It is fast sinking into ruin, and nothing about it looked neat or in repair, but the nicely formed mathematical angles of the new fortifications by which the ruins are protected.

This town was the first seat, and the very high place of the Reformation. At its once famous university Luther began his celebrated career. Here he was professor, and from the pulpits and desks of Wittenberg he thundered his masculine and powerful eloquence against the corruptions of Rome. The university is now forsaken and suppressed. The tombs of Luther, of Melancthon, and of their friend Frederick the Wise, are still in the castle-church, but this venerable cradle of one of the best children of improving knowledge is passing fast into oblivion. All that was sacred, so well as all that was grand, has decayed, and man should cease to venerate what time and nature have not spared; while his life is fresh, and his reason strong,—while his sense of enjoyment is unfaded, he should be happy in these gifts; he should regard them as holy, and they should be the themes of his admiration. It may, perhaps, be absurd to venerate buildings that, however they might once have been sacred as the abodes of piety, learning, and genius, are now mouldering to decay. Yet it would have done honour to the Germans, while they are so enthusiastic in reviving every memorial of their ancient glory, if they had resented, as a slight to their national reputation, the recent destruction of the university where Luther and Melancthon had been teachers. I arrived too early at Wittenberg to see their tombs without waiting longer than was pleasant to me, and therefore I did not remain. My walk was nearly solitary the whole day, but not cheerless. At a village I found boys sliding; I slid with them. The village dogs barked at me as they all do at strangers, and as if I were animated by the proverb, that with wolves a man must howl, I made a noise at them in return, and amused myself pelting them with stones, and chasing them. It is thus possibly that a solitary traveller may best amuse himself, and may save himself from being unemployed, and almost from being alone.

In travelling, one does not always know where best to stop, nor do tired legs and worn-out spirits always come at the same point of time with the most comfortable inn. In this desolate country it was some time after I was tired and hungry before I reached either a public-house or a village. At length I got to a place called Kropstadt, but found no other refreshment there but bread and cheese, and sour beer. This bad fare, and a ragged landlady, from whose torn finery I concluded she had made several campaigns, and a stifling dirty room, were not temptations to make me linger over my repast, and I had soon finished, ready to accompany a soldier and his wife, who I found journeying on foot the way I was going. He was a Prussian, who had just received his dismission from his regiment, which was at Mayence. He had there married his wife, and was now conducting her into East Prussia, where he had himself been born. For him to marry, it was necessary for him to have the permission both of his parents and of the government. It began to blow strong, and to snow, and though we walked within a few yards of each other, till we reached Trauenbritzen, we were too much engaged with umbrellas to allow of much conversation. I inquired here after the best inn, and the soldier, who said he knew the place well, pointed one out to me, which I soon found could have little claim to the title, and which seemed to be recommended to him by the fine sign of Marshal Blucher. The extent of my day’s walk was probably somewhat more than thirty miles. The greater part of the country was of a sandy soil, and covered with forests of pines. There were few villages, and not much cultivation. This, with bad weather, it snowing occasionally, and the snow covering the ground, gave me an idea that the country was more desolate than possibly it is. The road, however, till within a short distance of Trauenbritzen, where a new one was made, that is to be extended to Leipsic, was in general nothing but a track through openings in the forest, and where carriages and travellers not unfrequently lose their way. Such is the state of communication in some of the most enlightened parts of Germany. Bad as this is, it has been improved very much within thirty years.

The public-house, for it did not deserve the name of an inn, was full of people, who were collected to pass their Sunday evening in revelry and drinking. They were all traders or peasants, and smoked and talked loud, and constantly. One had brought his book to read, which he continued to do, except when he thought his superior wisdom enabled him to give information to the rest of the company; one of them said pithy things in a poetical tone of voice and manner. He had been a great speculator, though, as his neighbour informed me, all his schemes had failed. Yet he still believed he had schemes that could improve the world. When any other of the company complained, he told him, in an oracular manner, “Have patience, brother, and you will find in a little time all will go well. “Another appeared anxious to shew how stupid he was. He had been at school for three years, and had also had a private instructor, but he had not learnt to write, and could barely read. He attributed his ignorance to his teachers, and seemed to think teachers ought to be punished if scholars wanted brains and industry. Government, he said,—for from an unhappy frame of mind, the most ignorant of all beings think themselves fit for legislators, particularly to make restrictive laws,—ought to make some regulations for instructors. He appeared to think they ought to be compelled to make stupid people like him men of genius and talent. Thus it is, also, in many other cases, ignorance and imbecility attribute their wants and their failings to a want of laws, and imagine that political regulations can give knowledge, and wisdom, and wealth. They constantly demand this or that restrictive law, till the whole race of mankind are chained down to what ignorance, and imbecility, and avarice, have prescribed. The comfort of my inn did not compensate the privations of the day, and I went early to bed, tired from my walk, and unrefreshed from what I had enjoyed.

It snowed very much in the night, and in the morning a violent snow storm came on soon after I had set out on my journey. The snow froze as it fell, or drifted up in great heaps, and the icicles hung about my whiskers; fortunately the wind was behind me, which enabled me to protect my face and ears with my umbrella. Nothing was to be seen but the tops of the trees by the road side, and but for them, I might have wandered in some ditch or wild. After walking three hours, one of those trifling accidents happened, which, when not repaired in time, sometimes lead to serious misfortunes; the seam of my shoe burst, but as I remembered the old story of the nail and the shoe, and the horse and the rider, I prudently remained at Belitz till it was repaired. The people of the house pleased me; the man brought me slippers, an accommodation not always to be had, even when asked for. The eldest daughter was a very handsome brunette, but, though not above twenty years of age, had lost her teeth. The other children had black eyes and hair, which was rather extraordinary for the country, and they appeared very intelligent and gentle. German children are generally soft and gentle, even to weakness. They seldom appear robust, which may be owing to the general enfeebled nature of the parents, and to late marriages. If the evil influence of the latter cause were not more to be attributed to the system of libertinism pursued prior to marriage, than to the mere lateness, it would form one of the strongest objections I know to that moral restraint which is recommended by Mr Malthus. For a debilitated, an effeminate, and an imbecile race of men would be but a poor remedy for the evils of poverty, and a redundant population.

Towards noon the weather became better, but the wind had shifted, and blew in my face. I made a screen of my umbrella, and, thus protected, marched on. Whether it is that the Prussians are less friendly than the Saxons, or whether the cold was too great to allow them to speak, cannot be decided, but several people would hardly return my salutation. At length I overtook a man with a long white bag, which was filled at both ends, and thrown over his shoulder. A broad face, red cheeks, wide mouth, a short snub nose, and a sort of scattered white whiskers, gave him the air of good-natured simplicity. A large hat covered his brow,—a long blue coat reached almost to the ground,—trowsers and boots—made up his dress. He wore both a cross and a medal, having made several campaigns, and, like many of the peasants, had won all the honours of a soldier. We talked about the size of his father’s farm, how he held his property, and such things, and we arrived at Potsdam together. There were many fine buildings here, but none which pleased me so well at the moment as a comfortable inn, where beef-steaks for supper and a good bed were provided me.

This day’s walk did not exceed twenty-six miles, and the country appeared mostly uncultivated, with a very large proportion of forests. There were very few villages, and these were small, the houses were built of mud, and generally thatched.

The road was good throughout, the royal chaussee being here completed; and it is certainly a very fine one. It is paved in the middle, though the pavement is broad enough only for one carriage, while the road would allow of four passing a-breast. It is planted with trees on each side. It is not only useful, but magnificent;—perhaps too magnificent. The roads which branch off from it, though they lead only to a small collection of mud huts, are equally spacious with the main road, like that royal taste which builds a magnificent portico to a stable. Royal roads are less constructed with regard to their general utility than to their magnificence, and their utility to the monarch; and the roads of Great Britain, taken as a whole, are not only more numerous, but each road, merely because it is planned by individuals who are to reap a profit from it, is better calculated for public utility than any one of the magnificent royal roads of other countries.

Out of Britain most people conceive it to be one of the duties of government,—one which individuals cannot exercise,—to make roads. Remembering this, led me to speculate, as the snow fell, as to the real extent to which governments—considered, as some individuals different from, and separate from the mass of society, regulating the whole—are necessary for its good. I remembered, that what was considered formerly as one of their most important duties, the creation of a proper currency, had recently been performed in a much more commodious manner by individuals, as bankers, and that paper circulation had only become inconvenient through governments interfering with it; that, probably, all the now hateful duties of a police might be better performed by the individuals of the society taking on themselves, as every man now partially does, the duty of learning what his neighbour’s conduct is, and speaking of it freely and openly, and treating him according to his behaviour. It is very evident that every thing regulated by the opinion of the whole society, not directed by the previously formed opinions of some few men, must be always regulated, in the best possible manner, agreeable to the wisdom and knowledge of the whole society. What is directed by a few men, can only be regulated by the wisdom and knowledge they possess, and it must be better every society should be regulated by all its wisdom and knowledge, rather than by a part of these estimable qualities. I can hardly tell with what narrow bounds this speculation led me to circumscribe the duties of governments, nor how much the reverence which I, in common with every man, had been taught to pay them, dwindled in my imagination. I will not answer for the utility of such a speculation further than that it was a great pleasure to me on a cold snowy morning, when I was travelling alone in a strange country.

Potsdam is a well built town. Most of the streets are at right angles, and, though the houses are not regularly built with regard to one another, most of them were nicely painted, clean, splendid with gilt and decorations, and all looked well. There was a sort of meretricious splendour about sign-boards and gilded letters to tell you where coffee and tea were to be bought, or brandy and beer to be sold, that reminded me of England, and that differed from the modest inscriptions of the Saxons. It is very expensive to see all the shows of Potsdam, such as the picture gallery, the insides of the palaces, the tomb of the great Frederick, and others. They are, therefore, generally visited in parties, and as there happened, at that time of year, to be no persons visiting them, I was debarred from seeing them, without expending more Thalers than I thought them worth pence. I merely looked, therefore, at the gardens, and the outsides of the palaces. Truly, the lodgings which are here provided for one family, might almost serve a nation. There are not less than eight spacious palaces in Potsdam, or in its vicinity, belonging to the sovereign. I doubt if the profusion of the sovereigns of France, whatever their splendour might do, equalled the profusion of the sovereigns of Prussia.

The extensive gardens of these palaces are ornamented with a great number of statues and busts, all of which were then shapeless from the snow. Many of them were mutilated, and most of them were covered with moss. The climate of Greece and Rome, from which countries we have borrowed the practice of placing statues in gardens, was much more suitable to it than the cold and wet climate of the north. And when the Greeks and the Romans did not live entirely out of doors, they lived much more in public places, in their gardens, and amongst their statues, than we do, or can. We live in our houses, and it is them, therefore, which we ought to render convenient and to adorn. Statues in our garden accord neither with our climates, with our habits of life, nor with the best mode of making our gardens. The great expence of so many carved pieces of marble, is a mere absurd imitation of an ancient custom; it is unsanctioned by reason, and it is equally condemned by good taste and sage economy.

The most meritorious thing at Potsdam—always excepting the immense house which is there, so large as the celebrated rope-making house at Portsmouth, intended to protect men during rainy weather, while they are taught to stand upright, to thrust their breasts out and hold their bellies in, to march and countermarch with regularity and precision—is the canal which passes here, and which connects the Spree with the Havel, and thus affords a water communication from the Elbe to Berlin. But even this, like most royal works, the lover of utility would censure, as being much more magnificent than it ought to be, made more to gratify the vanity of the monarch than to improve the condition of the people. There is much water about Potsdam, and to see it in its beauty, the summer and a party are necessary. Both were wanting, and I left it, therefore, notwithstanding it snowed and blew a storm, to walk to Berlin. The wind was behind me, my umbrella protected me, and blew me, running, along. I went merrily forward, and got sweet greetings and smiles from some fine women, to whom I wished a better journey than they were likely to have in open carriages, exposed to the snow. It is a pity women do not always know the power which bright eyes and cheerful smiles have on men, or they might lead them to acquire many a gentle accomplishment, to do many a gentle deed, that would promote the happiness of both. When I now turn back on my peregrinations, I know nothing that leaves a stronger feeling of regret than the recollection of many of those sweet faces, that smiled on me for a moment, and have never been seen any more. This is one of the most painful of all the feelings of the traveller. He catches a momentary view of beings he thinks time would make him love, and then he loses them for ever. They seem to him like the angels of the world, and he is only consoled for their loss by reflecting, that it is that itself which makes him so regard them, and that, possibly, he would have ceased to adore had he known them better.

I reached Berlin at four o’clock, and took up my quarters at the Golden Angel. For some part of my walk I had an elderly woman, carrying a large loaded basket, for a companion; she was to carry it, in all, ten miles. She complained very bitterly of the sovereign, who she called a complete Buonaparte. She had been the mother of twelve children, and seven of these had been soldiers. Surely her labour was hard enough, yet she said she could not get enough to feed her well, and keep her warm. When absolute idleness wallows in riches, and industry has nothing, there is surely something wrong in the social regulations.

CHAPTER III.: Prussia.

The Havel and the Spree rather spread themselves into innumerable lakes and ponds, than flow through the sandy flat country about Berlin. Noble woods, or parks, extend to the very gates of this city, which stands in a flat country, in the midst of forests, deserts, and swamps. In proportion as its situation is bad, its splendour is great. When I passed, on the morning after my arrival, over a little bridge leading from the palace to the arsenal square, Platz am Zeughaus, I was surprised at the magnificence of the buildings. There wanted nothing but a Seine and the lofty trees of the Champs Elysees, and the Tuillerie gardens, to make this, in point of the surrounding buildings, equal to the beautiful view from the bridge of Louis XV. at Paris. Many of the cities of Europe may contain, on the whole, more fine buildings than Berlin, but there are few which contain so many all collected on a spot. The palace, Schloss, the house in which the sovereign resides; the arsenal, which is a very handsome building; the library, the university, the Catholic church, the opera house, several very fine private houses, and a very handsome street, Unter den Linden, which is planted with rows of trees, and at the end of which stands the famous Brandenburg gate, may be all seen at once from this spot, or by merely turning the head. The house in which the king resides is not a very showy building, but the palace proper, Schloss, is very large, consisting, indeed, of three distinct buildings. The most modern is the most elegant. It is built in the Italian style, and one of its entrances is a triumphal arch; the next in point of age, joining and forming one side of the first, is a mixture of styles of building; and the third is a dismal Gothic castle. The whole of this is kept for state, and is inhabited merely by officers of the court and servants. How many stately mansions have I now seen, that serve no other purpose but for birds to roost in, or to employ persons to keep them in repair! How many beautiful gardens, that wanted nothing but human beings to enjoy them! Few succeeding monarchs will dwell in the house of their predecessors. They build palaces for themselves, which fall, in their turn, into ruin. What an expence of human labour, to heap stones on stones, and how may its misdirection be deplored, when the wastes of the earth are yet untilled, and when the intellect of the great multitude is utterly neglected.

There are no monarchs of Europe, who, in proportion to the extent and wealth of their dominions, have built so much and so splendidly as the monarchs of Prussia. Berlin is throughout well built, though marks may be discovered of houses patched up to make a shew, and the new town appeared not to have grown from the wants of the people, but to be habitations ready provided for them. It looked as if it were half uninhabited. One of the best streets is that which extends from the Brandenburg gate to the square of the arsenal. It is planted with trees, is wider than the Boulevards of Paris, and is the fashionable promenade. This celebrated gate is built after the Propyleum at Athens, though it is much larger. It consists of twelve large columns and eighteen small ones. On the top is a triumphal car, carrying Victory, who, again, carries a lance, with the iron cross of Prussia. This figure was taken to Paris, but brought back when the armies of France could no longer claim her as their own. It makes a very splendid entrance to this military city. Immediately outside of it is the Thier garten, a park containing nice walks, and many places for buying refreshment, and where there is music and dancing on Sundays and holidays. On New-year’s-day this park was crowded. A great portion of the company came in sledges, the horses of which were decorated with small bells, and fine feathers. The drivers constantly cracked their whips, and, driving along with great velocity, they gave life to this winter scene.

The Gen d’Arm Platz is a handsome square. The theatre that was burnt in 1817 stood here; enough of its walls remained to testify it had been a very handsome building. There are also in this square two churches, equal in beauty, and resembling one another in their porticoes and steeples. The porticoes are like Grecian temples, and built in the form of a square, three sides of which are formed of flights of steps, columns, capitals, cornices, and pediments, with a multitude of figures. These temples support the steeples. To the fourth side the church is attached. The porticoes are almost large enough to conceal the real churches, which cannot be praised for architecture. I hesitated to mount one of these elegant flights of steps, thinking it could lead only to a sanctuary. I did, however, and found, that like all unemployed buildings in large towns, it was little better than a common receptacle for dirt. The other was appropriated as an office to that part of the police which looks after vagrants and beggars. Gorgeous temples for such uses are in the worst possible taste. They cause a painful feeling, similar to that which arises when a woman who looks like a beauty speaks, and convinces us she is a fool or an idiot. Such immense labour, to attain so trifling an end, is like the dexterity of throwing grains of millet-seed through a needle’s eye; and the ingenious contrivers of such costly buildings ought to be rewarded with quarries of stone to build more.

William’s Square, Wilhelms Platz, is adorned with the statues of some of the most famous of Frederick’s generals; and the many other squares and fine buildings of Berlin make it much to be regretted that the capricious taste of a few individuals should have been enabled to build so fine a city in so bad a situation.

I had remarked at Leipsic more bustle and business than I was accustomed to see in German towns, and in Berlin the stir was still greater. More inhabitants would necessarily make more bustle, but, independent of number, each individual seemed more occupied, and to move with greater activity than the Germans generally do. The coldness of the weather did not allow of standing still, but this would have kept indolent people in their houses rather than have sent them swarming into the streets. The ground was covered with snow, and it froze very hard, yet the walks and streets were crowded.

There was a pert commanding air among the better dressed males, and the females were generally shewy and gaily dressed, but I could not deny to both, particularly the latter, a greater degree of personal beauty than belongs to their southern countrywomen.

A person is placed by the police in each inn as a valet-de-place, and to be at the same time a spy; he is obliged to give an account of all strangers on their arrival, and to carry their passports to the police for inspection. He is licensed by it, and no other can be employed. When any person wishes to remain three days or longer in Berlin, his passport must be deposited in the police-office, and he receives a particular permission to remain the time he requests. It was quite uncertain how long I should stay, and I did not therefore choose either to ask for a ticket of residence, or have my passport signed, as intending to depart. The valet-de-place thought this wrong, and intruded himself on me more than once, to tell me what I ought to do, and to warn me of the consequences of neglect. I turned him out of the room, and heard no more of him. All such people are regular spies, and, considering their situation, it is like hiring your servant to betray you. No political reasons can compensate the distrust which domestic spies cause amongst individuals. They tend to destroy all the confidence of men in each other, and to set strife and hatred betwixt them. Governments forget the end of their existence when they employ so odious a means to attain a trifling object. I had travelled from Munich to Vienna with a French gentleman, who was an object of suspicion to the Austrian police, and with him I was occasionally in the habit of walking about, and wherever he went he was followed and watched. Thus it is that the substance of a nation is wasted, and its morals often perverted, to provide a fancied security for its fearful rulers.

The university of Berlin was established in 1810 by the munificence of the sovereign, who gave a palace for this purpose, and salaries to several learned professors, whom he called from other places. In 1818, it instructed more than 800 students. The mode of instruction, and what is taught, are similar to the mode of instruction, and to what is taught at Göttingen, under which head a more particular description of a university is given. The most celebrated Professors at present are Schleiermacher, Göschen, Savigny, Hufeland, Thaer, and others. There is also a university at Breslau, one at Königsberg, one at Halle, and one at Griefswalde; to these the newly established one at Bonne must be added, making six for the whole kingdom. High-schools, in which a learned education is begun, are established in most of the towns. In Berlin alone there are five such. There is also a military school, and a school for engineers; three seminaries, in which schoolmasters are educated; several academies for the arts,—for singing, for architecture; a school for the blind and a school for the deaf; and altogether, more than 250 places for education. Many of them are private, but none can be established without permission.

Berlin is at present one of the places where animal magnetism is most cultivated and studied, and Professor Wolfart makes experiments in this branch of knowledge, and instructs others in it. In Britain it is despised. In Germany it is honoured, and public professors are appointed to teach it. Premiums have been offered by learned bodies for the best classification of its phenomena; and laws, both in Bavaria and Prussia, regulate its administration, and prescribe to what persons its secrets may be made known, and its blessings given.

Museums, galleries of pictures, learned societies, and various collections of things that are not useful, abound in Berlin. They cannot be called peculiarities, for they are found in every city of Germany, and it requires a most practised eye to ascertain the superiority of one to another. One which deserves to be mentioned, from the evidence it affords of what learned triflers can employ themselves with, is a collection, in high preservation, of those worms which are sometimes found in the bowels of the human body, (Eingeweide Würmer,) and whose existence there constitute a particular disease. The cure of this disease cannot be promoted by such a collection, neither can it explain either the nature or the sources of the disease. A Professor Rudolpi is the collector. A similar collection exists in Vienna, whose collector is not only thought to be a man of industry, but of talent. These gentlemen must very much need a decent occupation. To bestow professorships on them, and to honour them, seems to me like the vain worship of an idol. There is but one step lower in which learned uselessness can go in its filthy researches. I should be sorry, by the selection of this peculiarity, to teach the reader to infer that the Germans were particularly fond of such pursuits, and that this fondness was a feature of the national character. A love for trifles and absurdities may probably be more common among the learned of Germany than among the learned of other countries, but trifles and absurdities are the occupations merely of a few, and intelligent Germans lament the fondness for them as a peculiarity of individuals, and not as forming the national character.

There are fewer public reading rooms in Berlin than in any city I have visited in Germany, and this was to me a matter of regret, as they are good places to gather items of information. There are a great many pamphlets and periodical works published there; some of them are devoted to political subjects, as those published by Speners and Voss. One work which is celebrated on account of its editors, Messrs Savigny, Eichorn, and Göschen, gives information relating to jurisprudence only. Dr Wolfart instructs the world periodically in the progress of animal magnetism, another work gives an account of all new voyages and travels, and various daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly, accounts are given of the progress of the fine arts, but there are only two what may be called newspapers, which admit political discussion in their columns. They are both published twice a-week, which is but a scanty supply of political fare for a population amounting to 179,000 people. Political reformations or revolutions effected by such preparations, can never answer any good purpose. Information amongst all classes must be more generally spread. One of these newspapers is devoted to the court, and sometimes gently censured Prince Hardenberg for too great a love for the freedom of the press. He is thought to be its great champion, because he declared some years ago, that its influence was beneficial both to sovereigns and subjects. He has since made ample reparation for this departure from state wisdom, by the representations he made at Weimar, where a newspaper called the Oppositions Blatt, one of the most liberal of Germany, was at one time suppressed from his demands.

Without being a man of liberal principles, Prince Hardenberg has been a reformer through his life. He began his career, I believe, at the court of Brunswick, with many professions of benevolence, many promises to forward the education of the people, and he excited many hopes of the improvement he was to effect. He had his fortune, however, to make as a statesman, and it soon appeared that to insure that was the great object of his ambition. It seems now secured, but his disposition to reform remains. He moulds nations in his hands, and if the subjects of Prussia do not improve, it will not be because their institutions have not been many times remodelled and reformed.

The population of Berlin is rapidly increasing; in 1813, exclusive of military, it amounted to 166,584, and in 1817, to 178,811, of which 86,099 were males, and 92,712 females. In 1813, 146,026 professed Lutheranism, 12,117 Calvinism. The Jews amounted to 2698, the Catholics to 5725, and the Mennonites were 18. There were in Berlin,

The following notices are chiefly taken from a work in the German language, published at Berlin in 1818, by Mr Demian. The monarch of Prussia is said to possess more unlimited powers than any other of the sovereigns of Germany. And the circumstances of his having, in 1809, given an entire new form to the ancient states of East Prussia,—of his having, in 1808, destroyed all the privileges of the different classes of citizens, but as they depended on his will,—of his having at that period altered all the ancient forms of government, which time had established in the different towns of his dominions,—and of his now promising to his subjects, as a favour, some new constitutions, seem to justify this view. The ancient privileges of the cities, and separate classes of citizens, were undoubtedly most mischievous things; but it was rank jacobinism to attempt to destroy all these old distinctions and privileges by a decree. It was, in fact, an arbitrary abolition of corporate rights, which have been not unfrequently abolished by the sovereigns of Germany. The destruction of the University of Wittenberg by this sovereign is another instance.

The disposition to reform possessed by the monarch of Prussia and his minister, which has almost amounted to revolution, has brought into their own hands nearly the whole of the ancient privileges of the different classes of people. The reigning family was, in the middle of the seventeenth century, petty sovereigns, scarcely capable of bringing together an army of 2000 men, limited in all their operations by nobles almost so powerful as they were. Yet the Prussian monarch now rules over a territory of 79,162 square geographical miles, a population of 10,000,000, and an army of 300,000 men. He possesses almost unlimited power, and the welfare of millions can be sacrificed to his ambition.

In moral observations, time may be for a moment neglected, and we are then so much astonished, that a simple count of Brandenburg should have become the quiet possessor of a third of Germany, as that a lieutenant of artillery should have seized on the empire of France. In one case, we may trace a family passion for aggrandisement, that has constantly descended from father to son, and that has become legitimate from the permanence of the evil and the slowness of its progress. In the other, we see only the madness, the fury of a single life, which is less likely to have imitators; because it has not become legalized by opinion, and is abhorred by all good men. The petty counts of Brandenburg, who were originally little more than officers, either of the army, or for the administration of justice elected by the people, are now the unlimited sovereigns of Prussia.

Of the 10,000,000 subjects now belonging to Prussia, 6,832,566 dwell in the eastern part of the monarchy, 2,896,022 in the western part; Swedish Pomerania has 120,000, and Neufchatel 51,000 inhabitants. In the circle of Dusseldorf, on the right bank of the Rhine, 527 persons live in each square geographical mile; on the left bank there are 465 to each square mile. The circle of Lauban, in Upper Lusatia, has also 500 inhabitants to each square mile, the circle of Aix la Chapelle has 300, of Cologne, 287, of Cleves, 250, of Erfurth, 219, of Minden, 212, of Reichenbach and Merseburg, 187, while the provinces of East and West Prussia contain only 69 to the square mile, the circle of Potsdam itself only contains 81; in the circle of Frankfort, on the Oder, there are 100. With the exception of one part of Upper Lusatia, the recently acquired dominions of Prussia are three and four times more numerously peopled than the old, which are some of the most sandy and desolate parts of Europe. By subjecting the inhabitants on the Rhine to the Prussian government, a more polished has been placed under subjection to a less polished people. The greater part of the subjects of Prussia are certainly German or European, which cannot be said of Austria; the greatest part of whose subjects are of Slavonic or Asiatic origin; but many also of the subjects of Prussia are Slavonians, Wendens, and Bohemians, who are people almost without civilization. The scattered peasantry of Prussia proper are not much better. From such subjects, slavish armies can be always raised, and with them it is now intended to secure the repose of Europe. Civilized people are now to be kept in awe by barbarians.

The largest half of the subjects of Prussia are Protestants, about 4,000,000 are Catholics. In East Prussia, most of the inhabitants are Lutherans, they possess 384 churches, the Calvinists 18, and the Catholics 83. In West Prussia, half of the inhabitants are Catholics, and the other half consists more in Lutherans than Calvinists. In Brandenburg and in Pomerania, nearly all the inhabitants are Lutherans, a few Catholics and Calvinists are mixed with them. In the province of Posen, there are 517,743 Catholics, 208,168 Lutherans, and 3783 Calvinists. In Silesia, one-half of the people are Catholics, the other half Lutherans, with a very few Calvinists. In the province of Saxony, the people are chiefly Lutherans. In Erfurth and the Eichsfeld, the Catholics are as one, the Lutherans as eight. In Munster Paderborn and the dukedom of Westphalia, the people are chiefly Catholics. In the provinces on the Rhine, Catholics are also most numerous. In Dusseldorf, there are 203,833 Catholics; 69,600 Lutherans; and 98,587 Calvinists. In Minden, the people are chiefly Protestants; in the circle of Coblentz there are also many. In Neufchatel, Calvinism is the predominant religion. In the whole kingdom, the Mennonites amount to 17,000. The Moravians are somewhat less numerous. I will not affirm that there is strict toleration amongst all these people, that the Christians do not hate the Jews, and the Catholics the Protestants, but all these sects are strictly equal in the eye of the government. Although moderation and justice on its part may do much to soften angry passions, and its power may generally prevent overt acts of violence, yet it cannot produce that toleration and that charity which are of the heart. They are probably more general in Germany than in any other country of Europe, but they are, even there, not yet perfect.

The ordinary revenues of Prussia are estimated at seven millions sterling, the domains give one million, the regalia, such as salt, the post, &c. one million, tolls on rivers and roads, one million. The remainder of the seven millions is procured by taxes. The principal of these are a land tax; a tax on trades; a tax on persons; and taxes on doors and windows. These are not equal throughout the kingdom, particularly the land-tax, which is considerably higher in the western than in the eastern provinces. Indirect taxes are levied on meal, malt, horned cattle, wine, beer, vinegar, brandy, sugar, coffee, tobacco, spices, colours, wood, hay, straw, coals. There are stamp and other excise duties. The whole nett about L. 4,000,000 sterling.

In 1817, the government bought corn for its subjects in Westphalia and on the Rhine to the amount of L.330,000, which, with the army being then on an extraordinary footing, and costing L. 4,000,000 sterling, when its ordinary expence is estimated at L. 2,000,000, made the expence of the year far exceed the revenue. The debts, which are described to have been before very great, were augmented in 1818.

There are yet something like states or parliaments in some of the provinces of Prussia. In East Prussia they consist of three orders; 1st, The greater nobility; 2d, The smaller nobility; to which were united the free inhabitants of Cölmer; 3d, Deputies of the towns. But since 1808, these persons appoint deputies, viz. the nobility four; the Cölmer stand one, and the deputies of towns three. They are elected for three years, but must be approved of by the monarch. They form a permanent committee, which meets in Königsberg, but has no other power than to lay its wishes before the throne. It has no share either in levying taxes or making laws.

In Brandenburg, the states consist only of a committee of the four orders of clergy, great nobility, small nobility, and towns, which, like the committee for East Prussia, has nothing to do with making laws or levying taxes; but takes care of some funds belonging to the province, appropriated to paying debts contracted in its name.

In Pomerania, the three orders of clergy, nobility, and deputies from the cities, have general assemblies, and discuss in them the interest of the country, but Mr Demian has not stated what power they have; with such “states,” we cannot wonder that the Prussians are anxious to have a new constitution. In most of the other parts of Germany, there has always been some limitations set to the monarch’s power, by the different orders of privileged persons who composed the states. But the power of the sovereigns of Prussia got above the states of their country, and since the days of Frederick the Great, the latter have dwindled into insignificance. However loud public opinion may now be at Berlin, though it appears to have very little consistency, and however much may have been said about the secret societies of this city, the Prussians have been, and are still more despotically governed than any other people of Germany. They are, in this point, behind the Bavarians, the Saxons, the people of Wurtemberg, and perhaps also behind the Hannoverians. Such an opinion is entertained by the Germans themselves. They regard the former of the people here mentioned, with the inhabitants on the Rhine, as most advanced in political knowledge, and as possessing the soundest opinions.

The Silesians are probably the best part of the population of old Prussia. The inhabitants of Berlin, who are the most conspicuous of all the Prussians, as a political people, are given to trifling and debauchery. I observed there that same sort of meretricious glare which I had noticed at Potsdam. The Gen d’Arm Platz, which has been mentioned, is a specimen. There were some splendid shops; but in general, fine painted houses, gilded signs and golden letters, only concealed poverty and dirt. The cabarets, or dancing houses of the town, are notoriously numerous and profligate; the people are less domestic than those of any other part of Germany. I will not affirm from my own observation, but I am disposed to believe from all I have been able to learn, that the Prussians are the most boasting, flippant, and empty people of all the Germans. They make more noise than the rest, without having any thing more to be proud of, except that they have been long governed by greater despots than any other Germans, and that they have, under one of their sovereigns, been conspicuous in history.

There are two sorts of nobility in Prussia,—the great and the small nobility. The first is, again, distinguished into several kinds; 1st, Those who were formerly independent princes of the empire, and are now called mediatized nobility. There are eighteen of these who possess extraordinary privileges; they can be subjected only to a particular court of justice—the superior court at Berlin; they are free from all military service; they may keep a guard of honour: the administration of justice, of police, and the patronage of the churches and schools on their properties, belong to them; they are in possession of all the domains of their properties or sovereignties; the direct taxes levied on their subjects belong to them; their own property is free from direct taxation; they may work mines and salt works, but must deliver the products into the hands of the sovereign. This is the most privileged class. The second have similar privileges, but they are under the jurisdiction of the courts of the province in which they live. The third are distinguished as possessing the administration of justice, and the appointment of the clergymen and schoolmasters on their properties. All, even the small nobility, have some particular privileges, such as being subjected only to the highest tribunal of the province; they pay less land tax, particularly in Brandenburg, Pomerania, Saxony, and Silesia, than the other inhabitants of these provinces, and they are considered as having a greater right to places of honour than the rest of the people, though, since 1808, the rights exclusively to possess noble properties, and to be officers of the army, have been taken from them.

The clergy are also free from taxation.

In all those provinces which remained to Prussia after the peace of Tilsit, all differences of rank and privileges amongst the inhabitants of cities was, and remains, destroyed. The right of citizenship may belong to every man, of whatever religion or country he may be. Even unmarried women may possess this right. The Jews enjoy in Prussia all the rights of other citizens; and no other condition is requisite to practising any handicraft or trade, than buying from the government a patent or permission, which every one must buy. Formerly every person was obliged to serve an apprenticeship, to wander three years in search of knowledge, and then to be examined, before he could be a master. The rights of settling in any town, and of practising a trade in it, or the rights of citizenship, were purchased from the magistrates. Natives of any town could acquire these rights cheaper than strangers could acquire them. These regulations seem to have resembled, in most points, what we call the freedom of corporations. They are now all done away. The monarch set trade free from the fetters of ancient custom, and he pinioned it with his own. No man can now exercise any sort of profession without obtaining and paying for the permission of the government. By the abolition of all the ancient regulations, the sovereign increased his own power and influence very much. He increased his revenue by the price paid for the permission, and the power to give or withhold it is a power to let an individual live or to starve him.

In place of the various old customs by which the towns were formerly regulated and governed, a very theoretically perfect constitution was given to them all. The citizens now elect their own magistrates, subject to the confirmation of the crown. They had formerly the nominal privilege of doing this, independent of this confirmation, though the value of this privilege was much diminished by a few persons having in general seized on the magistracy. It does not appear, therefore, that the monarch of Prussia deserves the praise of generosity, which has-lately been bestowed on him, for having granted to the inhabitants of cities some new and valuable privileges. In fact, he arbitrarily abolished all the ancient customs of the people, and thereby possessed himself of all the substantial part of the power which belongs to controlling more directly the magistrates and the revenue of the towns.

Small towns of 3500 people have one salaried bürgermeister, and one salaried counsellor, with four or six unpaid counsellors. Towns of 10,000 inhabitants have also a salaried syndicus, with from seven to twelve unsalaried counsellors. Larger towns have one salaried upper bürgermeister, six salaried counsellors, of various titles, with from twelve to fifteen unsalaried counsellors. The salaried people are jurisconsults, and are elected for twelve years; the unsalaried are tradesmen or merchants, and are elected for three.

Some efforts have been made in Prussia to convert the land, the property in which is now divided between the lord and the peasant, into the full property of one or the other, and to free the peasantry from servitude, but they have not yet succeeded, and the condition of the peasants is different in different provinces. In some of them, leibeigen-schaft, or servitude, is yet general, and without any modifying stipulations. In others, the servitude is ameliorated by a variety of ancient customs and laws, which secure the property of the peasant. In others, the peasantry are free.

It seems that an improper method was followed when it was attempted to set property and the peasants free. The lord has a long-established right to rent and services,—the peasant an hereditary right to the use of the land; and the way in which the land was to be made the full property of one or other of the parties, was, that the peasant should resign half of his land, and retain the other half in full property. This supplies no accurate compensation for the rights of the two individuals, and it diminishes still more the size of the farms of the peasants, which are at present so small as very often barely to furnish a subsistence for a family. The more rational way would have been merely to have permitted either of the two parties to buy according to his pleasure and convenience, and according as he could make a bargain—the rights of the other. More is said on this part of the subject in the Chapter on the Division of Property in Land. Most of these remarks apply only to the ancient provinces of Prussia. The provinces on the Rhine have long had their feudal laws abolished; and this is one of the circumstances which makes it so much to be regretted that they should have been united to a country in which ancient feudality and modern despotism are both yet powerful.

Nothing will be said of the various departments of the ministry, further than that there is one whose peculiar duty it is to superintend and regulate commerce and manufactories, and that these branches of the industry of man have long been in Prussia protected and encouraged by all the power and wisdom of the government. There is another department of the ministry under whose superintendence the religion and establishments for education of the whole country are placed.

Prussia, though consisting of no less than 39 distinct, and formerly independent parts, is at present very scientifically divided into ten provinces, as follows: 1. East Prussia; 2. West Prussia; 3. Brandenburg; 4. Pomerania; 5. Silesia; 6. Posen; 7. Saxony; 8. Westphalia; 9. Julius-Cleves and Berg; 10. Lower Rhine. Over each of these provinces, an officer called an Upper President, is placed, who is a sort of viceroy, or king’s lieutenant for the province. Each province is again divided into several circles of government, Regierungsbezirke, generally three, over which a provincial government is placed, consisting of a president, and two boards, or committees; a government director presides in each committee, and it is composed of several persons called government counsellors. These two committees regulate the whole temporal concerns, even the most minute, of the circle, and amongst them may be enumerated making roads, and restraining the press. They are the censors of the press for all other writings than those on theological subjects, of which the consistoriums are the censors.

With these censors for the press in every part of the Prussian dominions, it is too much to affirm, as it is sometimes affirmed, that the press is free in Prussia. It is completely under the control of the government, and nothing is or can be published which it does not approve of. What, in compliance with the spirit of the times, it permits to be published, is another thing, but this permission hangs from its will, and the freedom of publishing is not secured by positive laws, or long continued custom.

Everyone of the circles of government mentioned is again divided into districts, over which a land-counsellor, a police director, or some other servant of the crown, according to its importance, is placed. This scientific and minute government has been introduced by Prussia into all her newly acquired provinces; and it is here particularly mentioned as shewing to what an extent of minute interference the cares of the government go, and how attentively it has provided that no small parishes of men shall govern themselves. They are governed by its police director.

The affairs of the church, and of establishments for education, are governed in each Protestant province by a consistorium;—consistoriums will be described in speaking of Hannover, and in the Catholic provinces by the upper president, assisted by the bishops as counsellors. A particular part of the consistoriums, called the church and school commission, which consists of clergymen and school-masters, has the superintendence of the education of the poor, and power to make propositions for the improvement of the regulations of the smaller schools; high schools are under the consistoriums themselves; universities are under the control of the minister of the department for religion and education.

There is also in each province a medical college to superintend and regulate medical police. In all these regulations a multiplicity of governors, and inferior governors may be observed with a strictness of subordination not to be surpassed by the most disciplined army. If this land be not at the height of prosperity, it cannot be for want of obedience on the part of the people, nor for want of regulations on the part of the governors. If its roads be wretchedly bad, if the country be desolate and uncultivated, as it generally is wherever I have seen it, it is not for want of persons, engineers and others, employed by the government, who have no other duties to perform than to keep roads in order, and to encourage cultivation. The immense quantity of persons who, by this system, are made to take a part in the government, is perhaps its very worst feature. Whatever changes may take place in its form, they are attached to power, and the remainder are accustomed to obedience; and, however the names of things may be altered, nearly the same undue quantity of power, and the same unreflecting obedience, will and must exist for many years.

For the administration of justice, the chief court, from which there is no appeal, is the upper Secret Tribunal at Berlin. For each of the provinces there is, or is to be, a tribunal of first instance, with a power of appeal from the tribunal of one province to the tribunal of the other, as second instance. There are particular courts for the mines and salt works. In the province of Posen, there are something like justices of the peace, and processes are there carried on verbally. Most of these tribunals consist of several members, and correspond in so many things to those of Hannover, that no further details will here be given of them.

There are ten different orders of knighthood, or of merit and medals, in Prussia. The fountain of royal honour flows copiously over the land, and leaves no part of it unwatered and unfertilized.

I left Berlin on the morning of January the 3d, 1818, at so early an hour, that no person was moving in the streets. It was freezing very hard, and the icicles formed from the breath attached themselves to the whiskers of the men, and to the necks and heads of the horses who were so unfortunate as to be going, with the wind in their faces, towards Berlin; I was grateful that it was at my back. Many people, mostly women, were going into town with quantities of vegetables. This is, therefore, a general feature of German society, and it is one in which it differs from ours, inasmuch as our daily markets are much more generally supplied by means of horses and carts, or a vast deal of the common labour which in Britain is performed by animals and machines, is performed in Germany by women. Many of them had profited by the snow to yoke dogs to little sledges, and were thus dragging their goods to market. Some of the animals required beating or encouraging to make them proceed, others could hardly be kept back by the weight of their mistresses, added to their usual load, and were barking with joy as dogs do when their masters first call them from the kennel to join in the sports of the field. Animals are not averse to exertion, and man, as an animal, is not naturally averse to labour. The fact is of importance, because it is frequently asserted, that a natural disposition in man to idleness causes many crimes. None of these people saluted me as the Saxons did, and, though this might be partly occasioned by the cold, it was also partly to be attributed to the less civil, less soft, and less pleasing character of the Prussians.

Charlottenburg, which I reached before daylight, is another palace belonging to the monarch, and famous for containing in its garden the tomb and monument of the late Queen of Prussia. My route was by Brandenburg to Magdeburg, and there are two roads from Berlin to the former town; one goes by Potsdam, the other by Spandau. I took the latter, because it was rather nearer, and because I had passed over a portion of the former. Though this was formerly the post road, and the only road, it had now degenerated to a mere track, which it was difficult to find, over wild and uncultivated heaths. It was not without inquiring several times that I reached Spandau, and on leaving it I was indebted to a shepherd, who was travelling my way, for guiding me. Such persons always tell you their history, and they communicate with you frankly, though they are seldom very amusing, but they give you an idea of their occupations and life. He looked after the flock of a nobleman who lived at Berlin, and he had been a journey of three days to the eastward of that town to buy sheep. His flock fed entirely on the otherwise waste lands, he had neither clover for hay, nor turnips to feed them.

I spoke also with a woman, who was carrying a large basket of the only white bread in general use in Germany,—which is little rolls called Semel,—from Spandau to Wustermarkt. The distance was twelve miles, and she made her living by carrying such a load twice a-week. She visited the villages in the neighbourhood, and it required one day to go and one to return. Her road was generally over wastes and heaths, and her employment is a specimen of the half-deserted half-improved state of the neighbourhood of the palace-ornamented capital of Prussia.

The difficulty I had had during the day to find the road, prevented me reaching Brandenburg, and made me think it prudent to stop at the commencement of night, when I was by no means tired, and where there was no sort of decent accommodation to be had. I had then walked nearly forty miles, and had never passed, since I left Spandau, any thing like a decent public-house or village, and I had been unable to procure any thing for dinner but bread and beer. The house where I stopped for the night promised nothing comfortable, but as the woman said I could sleep there, I resolved to make myself contented. She gave me, on entering, some very bad coffee, and when, at a later hour, I requested something more substantial for supper, I was informed there was nothing but brown bread, bad butter, and new brandy. I was still more disappointed, when, on asking to go to bed, I was informed I could have no other bed than some straw strewed in the room where I was then sitting, which was filled with a great many people who evinced no disposition to depart. There was, at that time of night, nothing better to be got, and I patiently submitted.

A travelling merchant, who sold earthenware, had taken up his abode in the house, and had carefully informed all the inhabitants of the village, that he meant, on that evening, to make a lottery of his merchandise, and he had invited them to come and spend their money with him. Towards eight o’clock they had accordingly, young and old, men, women, and children, assembled, and completely filled the room. He arranged his wares, in the most tempting manner, on a large table. They consisted of cups and saucers, glasses, plates, and pipes, which were neither coarse nor inelegant. Every one of these articles was put up at the same price, and at its full value, or at rather more than its full value. The price was eight grosschen, or about one shilling, and he had eight tickets, each of which he sold for a grosschen. When they were all sold the purchasers threw dice amongst themselves who should have the piece of china. The pedlar risked nothing himself, but, by promoting the gambling of the peasantry, he sold his pipes and his cups, and some of them acquired things of which they had no need. Married women, middle-aged men, and some young people, were the principal gamesters. As they were gambling, the lads and the lasses were roughly playing with each other, and the more elderly people were sitting quietly down to their pipes, their drams, and a little conversation.

To profit by such company,—to learn the ways of thinking of such people,—a traveller should not only know the written language of a country, which is all he has time to learn, but also every dialect, none of which he can acquire. I did not properly understand the language of the people, and cannot record their conversation. Almost the whole of the younger part of the males were dressed in short blue jackets and trowsers, with caps, like the undress of soldiers, and they had a military air. The older men wore the long blue coats, hanging almost on the ground, peculiar to the peasantry. In length of coat and size of breeches there was a strange contrast. The jackets of the youngsters descended but half way down their backs, and their trowsers were loose and large, like Cossack trowsers; the coats of the old men nearly reached the ground, and their leather breeches were like a second skin. While the fashions of the women in towns are incessantly changing, they remain in the country unchanged for ages; but the fashions of the men, because they travel about, change nearly so often in the country as in towns.

At midnight the company retired, and, as the room was well heated, though my bed was of straw, I slept away all my discontent.

Even by day-light I had some difficulty, on the following day, to find the road; it was amongst ponds and swamps; thanks to the cold they were every where frozen and passable. I soon saw Brandenburg, and directed my steps by its steeple. This town is surrounded by spread out rivers, which might afford an enterprising and industrious people a better means of communication than is now enjoyed by the inhabitants. There is no remains, in Brandenburg, of its having once been the seat of the present reigning family of Prussia. The old castle, which formerly stood on the Marienberg, close to the town, was demolished by Frederick the Great, and all that it contained valuable was carried to Potsdam.

Brandenburg is a town of 10,000 inhabitants, situated on the river Havel. It has manufactories of wool, linen, and cotton, but is principally noted for a great number of corn-mills, which are the means of supplying the inhabitants of Berlin with flour. There are 260 looms employed weaving wool, and 200 in weaving cotton and linen. There is also above 300 acres of vineyards in the neighbourhood, which are probably the most northern of Germany.

A new road is here begun, which is to extend to Magdeburg, but which is yet only completed so far as the village of Plauen. Formerly there was nothing but a track between Berlin and Magdeburg, one of the principal fortresses of the kingdom. I stopped for the night at a village called Perghen, where no other bed than one of straw could be procured. Genthin would have been too short a stage, and Burg was too far. At the entrance of the village there was a toll-bar and house, with a coat of arms, not royal, painted on that sort of shield, fixed to a post, which generally, in this country, tells the traveller where he has money to pay. The date of this painting was 1602, and the name of the owner, with the word noble, adeliche, prefixed, was also painted on the shield. It was one of those tolls levied by noblemen on all carriages and horses passing through their estates, so many of which formerly existed, and some of which still exist in various parts of Germany. The people of this nobleman, as the inhabitants of the village styled themselves,—for all belonged to him,—were exempted from any toll when they employed their own waggons, but were obliged to pay if waggons belonging to other people brought any thing to them. The government wished to destroy this toll, but the landlord said, with a grin of satisfaction, “Our nobleman was too strong for it.” Mr Adeliche Beerhern, for such was his title and name, seemed a sturdy sort of fellow, who lived on his own property, without going much to court, and, while he maintains this sort of independence, the monarch of Prussia can hardly be called an absolute monarch. The new road to Magdeburg, if it were made straight, would pass through the estate of this nobleman, but he seemed to like no such novelties as good roads, and had compelled the engineer to make a considerable circuit to avoid his grounds.

Of two public-houses, one of which was filled by noisy drinking peasants, and the other was quiet,—but at neither of which a bed could be got,—I chose the quiet one, and found the people willing to get me any thing the house or the village afforded for my supper, which consisted, however, of potatoes and a small piece of veal. The room was a large barn sort of place, excessively black from smoke. Two long tables were placed on two sides of the room, near the walls, against which oaken benches, as seats, were fixed. A large oven and the entrance occupied one of the other sides, and at the fourth side was the door to go into the kitchen, with a bed-place at each side of it. The bed-places were sorts of recesses, which are closed during the day by sliding doors.

There was a man here who said he was travelling about the country seeking employment, but who seemed to live more by his wits than by work. He paid for his potatoes and straw like the ancient bards, by reciting songs, poems, and stories. The principal subjects of his themes were the triumphs, real and imaginary, of the Prussian armies, the fatherly care of old Blucher, and the crimes of Buonaparte. He seemed to have collected all that had been written on these subjects, and quite charmed the landlady and the two maids with his recitals. They were doubly pleased when he sang any thing which they knew, and when they could join with him. They also had learnt to sing of the heroic deeds of the Prussians, and nothing else seemed to give them any pleasure. He had bought two books, one was called the Triumphs of German Freedom, and the other was extracts from the bulletins of the war. He had read them so often he knew them both by heart, and could repeat any portions of them. They had been his great teachers, and he delighted the people of the house with many true accounts of Prussian achievements. He was completely in rags, and appeared to have nothing but what was given him, yet, for that very reason, because he knew that the supply of his wants depended on his giving pleasure to others, he had acquired the talent of giving it, and kept his hearers not merely amused, but delighted, all the evening. He made them happy, and, in spite of his nakedness, and the cold weather, he was happy himself. While a reciprocation of services is the source of one of the highest enjoyments of men, nobody seems to be so much injured as those classes of society, who, having all their wants provided for, never feel any necessity to exert the talents to give and receive pleasure, with which nature has endowed them. When the females were gone to bed, this miserable-looking being entertained the man-servant with the history of his amours and his gallantry, and no dashing guards’ officer, glittering in scarlet and gold, ever boasted of more success. This was strange society, if that can be called society, of which an individual is but the silent spectator; but a lonely pedestrian has often no choice; it is a matter of chance with whom he sits down.

My day’s walk was about thirty miles, and the soil, I observed, was very generally light and sandy. Some forests were passed, but no inclosures. Where the country was cultivated, there was no separation between the fields but water courses, and the furrow extended farther than the eye could follow it. Notwithstanding it was Sunday, many persons were working, and the girls of the public-house continued spinning all the evening, as they listened to the stories or joined in the songs of the ragged man.

What I experienced for these two nights, and on my road, where I could not procure a bed, and scarcely any thing to eat, may serve as a specimen of the wealth, or rather poverty, in which his majesty of Prussia’s subjects live. The reader will remember, that I was not more than seventy miles from Berlin, that I was on a high road, and that houses of public entertainment had neither beds nor any thing to eat. Such is the state of the dominions of the great Frederick. With such a degree of poverty, and thinly scattered as these people are, it is in vain to hope for any improvement but by enriching them, and by letting their numbers increase; and it is quite certain these objects can never be accomplished by the glories of the monarch, nor by those multiplied governments and governors, who produce poverty in proportion as they are numerous.

It required four hours the next day to reach Burg, which is a small old fashioned city, with gates and walls, and centinels, and tax-gatherers at the gate, like all the perfect cities of Germany. The church is an immense mass of stones rudely piled together; with nothing to disturb the heavy flat uniformity of a gable-wall rising into a steeple, but two small windows and a door. It looked as if it had been built to overshadow the houses in its neighbourhood. In the parade, as the public square of most of the towns of this part of Prussia is named, there was a Colossal statue of some warrior of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. An old woman who happened to be crossing the square at the moment, and who, unfortunately for me, was not one of the best chronicles of the place, as she barely remembered the name of the hero, who was probably in his time called immortal, told me it was the statue of one Rolla; further she knew not; she was much better pleased to go about her business, than to attend to questions which she was puzzled to answer. The statue was hewn out of sandstone, was in armour, and was placed against the corner of a house, as if its present situation had not been its original one. The legs were nearly worn away, from having served as whetstones for the knives of two or three generations of neighbouring butchers, and Rolla appeared likely at no distant period to be tumbled from his station.

The weather was warmer to-day; it thawed, which made the track, for the new road was not yet completed, rather dirty; I reached Magdeburg at five o’clock, somewhat tantalized by a winding, and fatigued by a heavy road. The country was partly cultivated, much of it was forest, and near Magdeburg, much of it was marshy and morass; yet there were more villages and more large houses in this day’s walk than I had seen since leaving Saxony. I had scarcely entered the town before I was accosted by two or three lads, with offers to show me a good inn, or if “I wanted any thing else;” they then whispered to me, “hübsches Mädel,” pretty girl, and they were ready to introduce me to some of their acquaintances. They were not quite so impertinent, intrusive, and disgusting as the Italians, who profess the same trade, but equally ready to serve. This was not the first time I had been so accosted in German towns. I found my way to an inn without their assistance. It was not one of the large houses that are numerous and good in Magdeburg, but a middling sort of inn, where I supped with some German travellers, and with the landlord and his wife. In the same room where we supped was a billiard table, and through a window, at the farther end, spirits were sold to whoever demanded them. After supper, the landlord introduced his little grand-daughter, to display her knowledge in geography, and her skill in recitation. She callea forth from the other guests many such exclamations as, “Ach du lieber Gott, ein charmantes Kind.” Ah! Good God! A charming child!

Magdeburg was distinguished in the tenth century by the peculiar favour of the Emperor Otto the Great, from the partiality which his wife Edgid, an English Princess, is said to have borne it for its resemblance to her native London. Little or no resemblance is now to be traced further than that, like London, it stands on the banks of a river. It has one long good looking street, called the Broad Street, a name indeed it merits; which, terminating with a church at both ends, has no despicable appearance. The large square has undergone the usual transformation in its name, and marks tolerably well the change which has taken place in society. It was the cathedral square, it is now the parade Platz. Where the clergy formerly solitarily meditated under the trees, or discussed, as the rosy wine mantled in their cheeks, the mysteries of theology, there soldiers now wheel and march, and thrust forward, first the right shoulder, then the left, with all possible activity and noise. There was as much bustle as if the days of the Great Frederick were returned, when this lover of cudgel discipline and long queues, rose with the sun to superintend the noble labours of soldier-drilling. I leave it to others to decide whether the dominion of the sword, which this change marks, be more or less beneficial than the dominion of the crozier. There is another square, in which there is still standing a monument, which was erected to the Emperor Otto in the tenth century. It is hewn out of sandstone.

The cathedral is a celebrated piece of Gothic architecture, but cannot be compared with many of the cathedrals and abbeys of Britain. With the exception of the cathedrals of Milan, of Cologne, Strasburgh, some of the buildings in the Netherlands, and those cathedrals which our countrymen built in France, there is but little Gothic out of our country which is worth much admiration.

The churches have all two steeples, a singularity sometimes seen in other towns. The houses present appearances somewhat similar to those of Leipsic, but the fronts are more ornamented with all sorts of fantastical things. Among these, the great dragons and flying serpents at the ends of the waterspouts, which vomit the rain as it falls on the roofs to the middle of the streets, were some of the most conspicuous and singular. The brass handles of the doors were polished, and there was a sort of neatness and cleanness conspicuous about the houses, to which I had long been a stranger. The “Gerichtshof,” Palace of Justice, was open, and I entered, but it is only into the deserted halls you are allowed to penetrate. The chambers of justice are closed against all but advocates and judges.

Magdeburg is a very strong fortress, and it is the chief place of what was formerly an independent archbishopric of the same name. It came early into the possession of the Brandenburg family, and followed the reformed religion at an early period of the Reformation. The city itself possessed, like all the cities of Germany, a sort of republican government, which had allowed the natural industry and ingenuity of the citizens room to develope themselves; and these, with a favourable situation, had made Magdeburg, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, one of the most flourishing cities in Germany. Its inhabitants had shown that they knew the value of their freedom, and they, on many occasions, defended themselves manfully against threats, exactions, and open attacks.

Few cities have been more conspicuous, in the history of Germany, than Magdeburg, though many have constantly played a greater part. Its complete destruction by the army of General Tilly, in the year 1631, is a blood stain, that, so long as Schiller’s history of the thirty years’ war shall be read, or Magdeburg remain, can never be erased, and that will always attest how much more cruel religious wars are than any other. After a siege of six weeks by the army under Tilly, the city was taken by storm on the 10th of May, and the number of inhabitants was reduced, in a few short hours, by the most horrid deaths, from 30,000 to 1,000, and not a building was left standing but two churches, and a few small houses. Amidst the murdered bodies, and the burning ruins, did this true soldier of the church collect his Croats and his Walloons in the cathedral, and there return in glorious song his solemn thanks to the benevolent Father of the beings he had been massacring, that the murder and the brand were completed. When some officers, whose names history has not preserved, came to Tilly, and requested him to put a stop to the carnage, he told them, “Come back in an hour, I will then see what is to be done; but the soldiers must have their reward for their labour and danger.” The destruction of Magdeburg only occasioned the Protestant princes of Germany to unite more sincerely in their opposition to the Emperor, and thus the wicked deed insured final success to the party it was meant to terrify and to ruin.

The town is said to contain 34,700 people, and is a place of considerable trade. The government of Prussia is doing all it can to favour Magdeburg, and that part of the commerce of the Elbe which centers in it. Seventy-five vessels are enumerated as belonging to it; yet it appears, from a comparison of the years 1798 and 1815, that the trade was greater in the former than in the latter year. Ribbons and woollen cloths are some of the principal manufactures of the town, but of the latter there was a remarkable diminution, while there was a small increase of the cotton manufactured between the years 1802 and 1815. The peace and the new steam navigation established between Berlin and Hamburg, should, however, be favourable to Magdeburg, and when I saw the town, there was an appearance of bustle and employment.

I left Magdeburg at noon on the following day, January 6th, and passing, in the course of a walk of twenty miles, through seven villages, reached Exleben to sleep. The number of the villages showed how much better the country is peopled here than between Berlin and Magdeburg. It had lost its sandy nature even before reaching Magdeburg; it was now become a good clay soil, and was all open and cultivated. The hills were gently undulating, and the numerous villages placed in the vallies, and surrounded with tall pines, above which nothing was seen but the church steeple or the white shining walls of some nobleman’s house, looked at a distance more picturesque than the villages of Germany generally appear. Though the houses were built of the usual materials, and in the usual form, both men and women looked cleaner than the peasantry do in general.

There was a wedding-feast at one of the villages, and the peasantry still preserve the ancient custom of collecting on such occasions as numerous a party as they can entertain. I have heard instances of their bringing together more than a hundred guests, and of their placing before them eatables enough to satisfy them, and brandy enough to make them all tipsy. There were only between forty and fifty persons present on this occasion. The guzzling was over, or at least suspended, and there was nothing to admire but the dresses of the peasant girls. Each girl wore a small green silk cap, from which streamed a great variety of different coloured ribbons, while, on ordinary occasions, the cap is black, or entirely laid aside. The hair is all combed back from the forehead, and rolled up from behind, and it is kept in this situation by the cap, which is made of pasteboard, or some stiff substance. It is covered with silk, fits close to the top of the head, and comes down on each side towards the ears, and otherwise looks like a monk’s cowl. Similar ones are worn in southern Germany, but they are there generally of embroidered gold or silver. Their long stays tightly laced, at the bottom of which the loose petticoats project all round, and then hang straight down, made them look as if they had been formed by some artist who intended to terminate them at the waist, in a point, and had then altered his mind, and placed the point on a large base, and them on two legs. This is a mode of concealing the human figure, within a distorted shell, that has been common to all the beauties of Europe. A short linen gown, or rather jacket, fits tight over the long stays, and descends no lower than them. The petticoats are all made of blue, white, and red striped woollen, and descend only half way down the legs; white worsted stockings, with flaming red, or other coloured clocks, and high heeled shoes, made up their dress. The whole party were clothed so much alike, that it might have been supposed they were all sisters. Among the men, the young ones were dressed like the inhabitants of towns, and the old ones wore long blue home-made coats, that descended to their ankles; they were lined or faced with red, and ornamented with large metal buttons. The old men wore cocked hats, and had the appearance of veteran soldiers. It is probable, from its resemblance, that this dress is derived from the dress worn by the soldiers of the Great Frederick. The peasants were then, as now, soldiers, and their dress in that capacity became their dress as peasants, just as at this time the younger peasantry mostly wear something that looks like the undress of the military. The use of a military dress may be promoted by the peasants who are retired from service being allowed as a privilege to wear regimentals.