Her Highness is a very beautiful woman, graceful in her person, and of a gay and sprightly character. She is in danger of growing corpulent, an inconveniency not uncommon in Germany, but which she endeavours to retard by using a great deal of exercise.
Besides the company who sup at court, the rooms were generally crowded with masks from the town, some of whom are in fancy-dresses, and keep themselves concealed all the time. And although those who came from the court are known when they enter the masquerade rooms, many of them slip out afterwards, change their dress, and return to amuse themselves, by teasing their friends in their assumed characters, as is usual at masquerades.
The country-dances are composed of all persons promiscuously, who incline to join in them.—Two women of pleasure, who had come to pass the Carnival at Cassel in the exercise of their profession, and were well known to many of the officers, danced every masquerade night in the country-dance, which her Highness led down; for the mask annihilates ceremony, puts every body on a footing, and not unfrequently, while it conceals the face most effectually, serves so much the more to discover the real character and inclinations of the wearer.
LETTER LIV.
Cassel.
Next to the Electors of the Empire, the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel is one of the greatest Princes in Germany; and even of those, the electors of Bohemia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Hanover, only are richer and more powerful than he. His country is in general hilly, with a great deal of wood, but interspersed with fertile vallies and corn-fields. The large subsidies this court received from Britain during the two last wars, with what is given in the time of peace, by way of retaining fee, have greatly contributed to the present flourishing state of its finances.
The reigning Prince forsook the Protestant faith about twenty years ago, and made a public profession of the Roman Catholic religion, in the lifetime of the late Landgrave, his father. This gave great uneasiness to the old Prince, and alarmed his subjects, who are all Protestants.