Let us examine a moderate-sized city about 1750. The old brick walls are still standing, with towers, not only over the gates, but here and there upon the walls. A temporary wooden roof is placed on many, the strongest have prisons in them, others that were decayed, having been riddled with shot, are pulled down. The city walls also are repaired; projecting angles and bastions still lie in ruins; blooming elder and garden flowers are planted behind, and trail over the stones; the city moat lies for the most part dry, the cows of some of the citizens pasture within it, or the clothmakers have their frames set up with rows of small iron hooks, and quietly spread their cloths over them. The usual colour since the Pietists, is pepper and salt, as it was then called; the old favourite blue of the Germans is also seen, though no longer made from German woad, but from foreign indigo. The narrow openings in the doors have still wooden planks, often two behind one another, and they are closed at night by the city watchmen, who stand at their post, but have often to be awakened by knocking and ringing, when anyone desires admission. On the inner side of the city wall, fragments of wooden galleries are still to be seen, on which once the archers and arquebuziers stood; but the passage along the wall is no longer free through its whole length, there are already many poor cottages and shops built on it.
In the interior of the city, the houses are unadorned, and not so numerous as in former centuries; there are still some waste spaces between, but most have been bought by people of rank and turned into gardens. Perhaps there is already a coffee garden, laid out after the pattern of the famed one of Leipzig; it contains some rows of trees and benches, and in the coffee-room, near the bar, are arranged the clay pipes of the habitués; but the maple head and the costly meerschaum are just coming into fashion. In the neighbourhood of the chief market-place, the houses are more stately, the old arcades are not preserved; these covered passages, which existed once throughout the greater part of Germany, led through the basement story to the market-places, protecting the foot passengers from rain, and acted as a communication from the house to the street. The old pillars and vaults are attached to the massive edifice of the council-house by coarse rough-cast cement and intermediate walls; in the dim poorly lighted rooms of the interior hang cobwebs, gray piles of records raise their heads amidst layers of dust; in the council-room, in a raised space, the railing of which separates the councillors from the citizens, are stiff-cushioned chairs, covered with green cloth, and fastened with brass nails; everything is unadorned, even the whitewash neglected, and everything poor and tasteless, for in the new State money is deficient, and no pleasure is felt in adorning public edifices, which are considered by the citizens as a necessary evil. Most of the houses in the market-place have pointed gables; they look out on the street, and betwixt the houses broad rushing gutters pour their water on the bad pavement, which is made of rough stones. Among the houses stands an occasional church or abandoned monastic buildings, with buttresses and pointed arches. The people look with indifference on these remains of the past, bound up with which there is scarcely any fond remembrance, for they have lost all appreciation of ancient art; owing to this, the edifices of the ancient times are everywhere ruined, as the castle of Marienburg was by Frederic of Prussia. The magistrates have carefully turned the empty space into a parsonage-house or schoolroom, knocked out the windows, and made a plaster ceiling; and the boys look from their Latin grammar with admiration on the stone rosettes and delicate work of the chisel,--remains of a time when such inutilities were still erected; and in the crumbling cloisters where once trod monks with earnest step, they now spin their humming tops; for the "Circitor susurrans," or "Monk," is still the favourite game of this period, which gentlemen of rank also, in a smaller form, sometimes carry in their pockets.
There is already much order in the city: the streets are swept, the dung-heaps, which fifty years before, even in towns of some calibre, lay in front of the doors--the ancient cleanliness having disappeared in the war--are again removed by an ordinance, which the councillors of the sovereign have sent to the superior officials, and these to the senate. The stock of cattle in the streets is also much diminished; the pigs and cattle, which not long before 1700 enjoyed themselves amidst the children at play, in the dirt of the street, are strictly kept in farmyards and out-houses, for the government does not like that the cities should keep cattle within the walls, for it has introduced the octroi, and a disbanded non-commissioned officer paces backwards and forwards near the gate, with his cane in his hand in order to examine the cans and baskets of the country people. Thus the rearing of cattle is carried on in the needy suburbs and farms: it is only in the small country towns that citizens employ agriculture as a means of support. There is a police also now, that exercises a strict vigilance over beggars and vagabonds, and the passport is indispensable for ordinary travellers. Constables are visible in the streets, and watch the public-houses. At night a fire watchman is posted near the council-house, and the warders of the towers by means of flags and large speaking trumpets, give danger signals. The engine-house is also kept in good order; clumsy fire-barrels stand beside the council-house under open sheds, and above them hang the iron-cased fire-ladders. The night watch are tolerably watchful and discreet; after the great war they here and there sang offensive verses, when they called out the hours, but now the pious parson has insisted upon both words and melody being spiritual.
The artisan continues to work in the old way, each one adheres steadily to his guild; the painters also are incorporated, and execute as a masterpiece a crucifixion with the usual number of prescribed figures. In the Roman Catholic districts they live by very moderate performances of the pictures of the saints; in the Protestant, they paint shields and targets, and the coats of arms of the sovereigns, which are to be seen in numbers on public buildings and over the doors of artisans. Most of the artisans adhere strictly to their old customs, and especially to their guild rights. Any one who enters the guild not according to artisan law, is treated as a bungler, and persecuted with a hatred, the intention of which is to exclude him from their society. Serious business is still transacted in front of the open shops; apprentices are taken, fellows receive the freedom, quarrels are accommodated, and the formula "By your kind permission," which introduces every speech, sounds unceasingly at all the meetings of the masters and the fellows; but the old colloquies and sayings of the middle ages are only half understood, rough jests have been introduced, and the better class already begin not to attach much value to the guild; indeed there are those who consider the old constitution of the guild as a burden, because it stubbornly resists their endeavours to enlarge their manufacturing activity; such was the case with the clothmakers and iron-workers. And the jovial annual feasts which were once the joy and pride of almost every artisan have nearly ceased. The processions in masks, and the old peculiar dances, are incompatible with the culture of a time in which the individual fears nothing so much as to lose his dignity, in which it is preached from the pulpit, that noisy, worldly amusements are sinful, and the learned men of the city find no adequate reason for such disturbance in the streets.
The gentry of the city are separated from the citizens by dress and titles. As much as the nobles look down upon them, so do they upon the citizens, and these again upon the peasants. A merchant has already a place among the gentry, especially if he occupies some city office or has wealth. In the families also of merchants of distinction, as the first wholesale houses are denominated, and in those of traders of consideration, as the possessors of large retail shops are called, a pleasing change may be observed in the mode of life. The coarse luxury of a former generation is restrained, better training at home and greater rectitude in business are everywhere perceptible. It is already a subject of boast that the members of old solid commercial houses are not those who sue for patents of nobility; nay, such vain new nobles are despised by the high commercial class.[[85]] And the unprejudiced cavalier is brought to confess, that in fact there is no difference between the wife of the landed proprietor, who goes with dignity into the cow-house to overlook the skimming of the cream, and the wife of a merchant of distinction at Frankfort, who during the fair sits in the warehouse; "she is well and handsomely dressed, she gives orders to her people like a princess, she knows how to behave to people of rank, commoners, and those of the lower classes, each according to their class and position; she reads and understands many languages, she judges sensibly, and knows how to live, and bring up her children well." Other circumstances, besides the intellectual energy of the time, contributed to elevate the German merchant. The influx of the expelled Huguenots had not in some respects been favourable to our German character, yet the influence that they exercised on German commerce must be highly estimated. About 1750 their families dwelt in almost all the larger commercial cities; they formed there a small aristocratic community, lived in social seclusion, and maintained carefully their relations with their connections in France, who, up to the present day, form an aristocracy of French wholesale traders, serious and strict, and rather of the old-fashioned aristocratic school. It was among the German Huguenots that the puritanical character of the Genevan and Flemish Separatists found many adherents, their staid demeanour had exercised an influence on other great houses both in Frankfort and along the Rhine. But German commerce had now acquired new vigour, and healthy labour raised the tone of its character. The impoverished country again took an honourable share in the commerce of the world. Already did the Germans export their iron and steel wares from Mark, Solingen and Suhl, cloth from all the provinces, fine cloth also of Portuguese and Spanish wool from Aix-la-Chapelle, damask from Westphalia, linen and lawn from Silesia; to England, Spain, Portugal, and the colonies, whose products in return had a great market in Germany; while the whole of the east of Europe, up to the frontiers of Turkey and the steppes of Asia, were supplied by German merchants. The poverty of the people, that is to say, the low rate of wages, made the outlay of many manufactures light and remunerative. In Hamburg and the cities of the Rhine, from Frankfort to Aix-la-Chapelle, the wholesale trade throve, and equally so in the frontier lands towards Poland, though in a ruder form, as it was one of barter. Goods and travellers were still conveyed down the Danube in rough wooden boats, which were built for a single voyage, and taken to pieces at the end of it, and sold as planks. And at Breslau the bearded traders from Warsaw and Novogorod sold the carts and horses of the steppes, on which they had brought their wares in long caravans to barter them for the costly products of western civilisation.
Already do the Silesian merchants begin to complain that the caravans come less often, and foreigners are dissatisfied on account of the new Prussian red-tapism and customhouse regulations of a strict government. At the same time travelling traders, with their sample cases of knife-blades, and needles, began to find their way from Lennep and Bartscheid to the Seine and the Thames, and the younger sons of great manufacturers met together with Hamburghers in London, Lisbon, Cadiz, and Oporto, and there, as bold and expert speculators, founded numerous firms. As early as 1750, cosmopolitanism had developed itself in the families of great merchants, who looked down with contempt on the limited connections of home. And something of the enterprising and confident character of these men has been communicated to their business friends in the interior. A manly, firm, and independent spirit is to be found about this time pervading all classes.
But most of the gentry in every city belonged to the literary classes--theologians, jurists, and medical men. They represented probably every shade of the culture of the time, and the strongest contrasts of opinion were to be found in every great city. Now, the clergy were either orthodox or Pietist. The first, generally pleasant in social intercourse; not unfrequently bon vivants, able to stand a good bottle of wine, and tolerant of the worldly jokes of their acquaintances. They had lost a good deal of their old pugnacity and inquisitorial character; they condescended sometimes to quote a passage from Horace, occupied themselves with the history of their parish church and school, and already began to regard with secret goodwill the dangerous Wolf, because he was so striking a contrast to their opponents, the Pietists. Where Pietist clergy resided they were probably in better relations with other confessions, and were especially reverenced by the women, Jews, and poor of the city. Their faith, also, had become milder; they were, for the most part, worthy men--pure in morals, faithful shepherds of souls, with a tender, lovable character. Their preaching was very pathetic and flowery; they liked to warn people against cold subtleties, and recommended what they called a juicy, racy style, but which their opponents found fault with as affected tautology. Their endeavours to isolate their parishioners from the bustle of the world was even now regarded with distrust by a great majority of the citizens; and in the taverns it was usual to say, mockingly, that the pious sat groaning over leather aprons, shoemakers' lasts, and tailors' geese, and were on the watch for regeneration.
The teachers of the city schools were still learned theologians, and, for the most part, poor candidates; the Rector, perhaps, had been appointed from the great school of the Halle Orphan Asylum. They were an interesting class, accustomed to self-denial, frequently afflicted with weakly bodies, the result of the hard, necessitous life through which they have had to work upwards. There were original characters among them; many were queer and perverse, and the majority had no comprehensive knowledge. But in very many of them was hid, perhaps, under strange forms, somewhat of the freedom, greatness, and candour of the ancient world; they had been, since the Reformation, the natural opponents of all pious zelots, even those that came from the great orphan asylum, from the training of the two Frankes and of Joachim Lange were generally more moderate than was satisfactory to the Pietist pastors. The leaves of their Cornelius Nepos were from constant use frightfully black; their lot was to rise slowly from the sixth or fifth form to the dignity of conrectors, with a small increase in their scanty salary. The greatest pleasure of their life was to find sometimes a scholar of capacity, in whom they could plant, besides the refinements of Latin syntax and prosody, some of their favourite ideas--a heathenish view of the greatness of man, influences on which the scholar, perhaps, in his manhood, looked back with a smile. But in this thankless and little esteemed occupation they laboured incessantly to form in the Germans a feeling for the beauty of antiquity, and a capacity for comprehending other races of men. And the unceasing influence exercised by thousands of them on the living generation was increased when Gesner naturalised the Greek language in the schools, and established an entirely new foundation for the instruction of scholars, which was spread by the teachers with enthusiasm; the spirit of antiquity, a thorough comprehension of the writers, not the merely grammatical construction, became the main object.
The school of every important town was a Latin one. If it attained to so high a point as to prepare the upper classes for the University, the boys who were to become artisans left when they got to the fourth form. This arrangement contributed to insure a certain amount of education to the citizen, which is now sometimes wanting. It was certainly in itself no great gain for the guild master to have some knowledge of Mavor, and of Cupid and Venus's doves, which were brought forward in all the poems of the learned, and embellished even the almanacks and gingerbread; but, together with these conceptions from antiquity, his mind imbibed also the seed of the new ideas of the time. It is owing to this kind of school culture that enlightenment of mind has so rapidly spread among intelligent citizens.
Strict was the school discipline; the usual words of encouragement which the poor scholars then wrote in one another's albums were--"Patience! joyfully onward!" But strictness was necessary, for in the under classes grown-up youths sat beside the children, and the bad tricks of two generations were in constant conflict. Through a great part of Germany there existed a custom which has been retained up to the present day, that the boys who were on the foundation must, under the lead of a teacher, sing as choristers. If they did not walk in funeral processions behind the cross, in their blue mantles, it was a grievous neglect, which much disturbed the discipline of the school, and as early as 1750 was complained of as an irregularity.