The garden was stored with fruits and the vegetable luxuries of the table, but was laid out with no attention to beauty, its inimitable prospects having, as the good monk said, rendered the society careless of less advantages. After exchanging our thanks for his civilities against his thanks for the visit, we descended to Poppelsdorff by a steep road, bordered with firs and fragrant shrubs, which frequently opened to corn lands and vineyards, where peasants were busied in dressing the vines.
About a mile from Bonn is a garden, or rather nursery, to which they have given the name of Vauxhall. It is much more rural than that of London, being planted with thick and lofty groves, which, in this climate, are gratefully refreshing, during the summer-day, but are very pernicious in the evening, when the vapour, arising from the ground, cannot escape through the thick foliage. The garden is lighted up only on great festivals, or when the Elector or his courtiers give a ball in a large room built for the purpose. On some days, half the inhabitants of Bonn are to be seen in this garden, mingling in the promenade with the Elector and his nobility; but there were few visitors when we saw it. Count Gimnich, the commander, who had surrendered Mentz to the French, was the only person pointed out to us.
The road from hence to Bonn was laid out and planted with poplars at the expence of the Elector, who has a taste for works of public advantage and ornament. His Grandmastership of the Teutonic Order renders his Court more frequented than those of the other ecclesiastical Princes, the possessions of that Order being still considerable enough to support many younger brothers of noble families. Having passed his youth in the army, or at the courts of Vienna or Brussels, he is also environed by friends, made before the vacancy of an ecclesiastical electorate induced him to change his profession; and the union of his three incomes, as Bishop of Munster, Grand Master and Elector, enables him to spend something more than two hundred thousand pounds annually. His experience and revenues are, in many respects, very usefully employed. To the nobility he affords an example of so much personal dignity, as to be able to reject many ostentatious customs, and to remove some of the ceremonial barriers, which men do not constantly place between themselves and their fellow-beings, except from some consciousness of personal weakness. All sovereigns, who have had any sense of their individual liberty and power, have shewn a readiness to remove such barriers; but not many have been able to effect so much as the Elector of Cologne against the chamberlains, pages, and other footmanry of their courts, who are always upon the alerte to defend the false magnificence that makes their offices seem necessary. He now enjoys many of the blessings, usual only in private stations; among others, that of conversing with great numbers of persons, not forced into his society by their rank, and of dispensing with much of that attendance, which would render his menial servants part of his company.
His secretary, Mr. Floret, whom we had the pleasure to see, gave us some accounts of the industry and carefulness of his private life, which he judiciously thought were better than any other panegyrics upon his master. His attention to the relief, employment and education of the poor, to the state of manufactures and the encouragement of talents, appears to be continual; and his country would soon have elapsed from the general wretchedness of Germany, if the exertions of three campaigns had not destroyed what thirty years of care and improvement cannot restore.
His residence at Bonn occasions expenditure enough to keep the people busy, but he has not been able to divert to it any part of the commerce, which, though it is of so little use at Cologne, is here spoken of with some envy, and seems to be estimated above its amount. The town, which is much neater than the others in the electorate, and so pleasantly situated, that its name has been supposed to be formed from the Latin synonym for good, is ornamented by few public buildings, except the palace. What is called the University is a small brick building, used more as a school than a college, except that the masters are called professors. The principal church of four, which are within the walls, is a large building, distinguished by several spires, but not remarkable for its antiquity or beauty.
Many of the German powers retain some shew of a representative government, as to affairs of finance, and have States, by which taxes are voted. Those of the electorate of Cologne consist of four colleges, representing the clergy, nobility, knights and cities; the votes are given by colleges, so that the inhabitants of the cities, if they elect their representatives fairly, have one vote in four. These States assemble at Bonn.
One of the privileges, which it is surprising that the present Elector should retain, is that of grinding corn for the consumption of the whole town. His mill, like those of all the towns on the Rhine, is a floating one, moored in the river, which turns its wheel. Bread is bad at Bonn; but this oppressive privilege is not entirely answerable for it, there being little better throughout the whole country. It generally appears in rolls, with glazed crusts, half hollow; the crumb not brown, but a sort of dirty white.
There are few cities in Germany without walls, which, when the dreadful science of war was less advanced than at present, frequently protected them against large armies. These are now so useless, that such cannon as are employed against batteries could probably not be fired from them without shaking their foundations. The fortifications of Bonn are of this sort; and, though they were doubtless better, when the Duke of Marlborough arrived before them, it is wonderful that they should have sustained a regular siege, during which great part of the town was demolished. The electorate of Cologne is, indeed, so ill prepared for war, that it has not one town, which could resist ten thousand men for three days.
The inhabitants of Bonn, whenever they regret the loss of their fortifications, should be reminded of the three sieges, which, in the course of thirty years, nearly destroyed their city. Of these the first was in 1673, when the Elector had received a French garrison into it; but the resistance did not then continue many days. It was in this siege that the Prince of Orange, afterwards our honoured William the Third, had one of his few military successes. In 1689, the French, who had lately defended it, returned to attack it; and, before they could subdue the strong garrison left in it by the Elector of Brandenburg, the palace and several public buildings were destroyed. The third siege was commanded by the Duke of Marlborough, and continued from the 24th of April to the 16th of May, the French being then the defenders, and the celebrated Cohorn one of the assailants. It was not till fifteen years afterwards, that all the houses, demolished in this siege, could be restored by the efforts of the Elector Joseph.
The present Elector maintains, in time of peace, about eight hundred soldiers, which is the number of his contingent to the army of the Empire: in the present war he has supplied somewhat more than this allotment; and, when we were at Bonn, two thousand recruits were in training. His troops wear the general uniform of the Empire, blue faced with red, which many of the Germanic sovereigns give only to their contingent troops, while those of their separate establishments are distinguished by other colours. The Austrian regiments are chiefly in white; faced with light blue, grey, or red; but the artillery are dressed, with very little shew, in a cloak speckled with light brown.