Let every impartial man therefore review the whole of this proceeding and then say whether the King of Saxony, so proverbial for his probity, so adored by his subjects, deserved to be insulted by such an unfeeling letter as that of Castlereagh. No! the King of Saxony better deserves to reign than any King of them all. Would they had even a small share of his virtues! Another proof and a still stronger one of the great integrity and honor of this excellent Prince, is, that when Napoleon offered to mediatize in his favor the various ducal Houses in Saxony, such as Weimar, Gotha, Cobourg, etc., and to annex these countries to his dominions, he declined the offer. Would Prussia, Austria, or Hanover have been so scrupulous?
The young ladies here, tho' well versed and delighting in various branches of litterature, cannot overcome that strong national propensity to tales and romances wherein the terrific and supernatural abounds; in all their romances accordingly this taste prevails strongly; nay, even in some of the romances, where the scene is laid in later times, there is some such anachronism as the story of a spectre.
I recollect reading a novel, the scene of which is laid in Italy about the time of the battle of Marengo, wherein a ghost is introduced who contributes mainly to the unravelling of the piece. A young lady here of considerable talent and of general information confessed to me, when I asked her, what subjects pleased her most in the way of reading, that nothing gave her so much delight as "Geistergeschichten." Lewis' romance of "The Monk" is a great favorite in Germany.[128] By the bye, his poetical tale of Alonzo and Imogen is evidently taken from a similar subject in the Volks-mährchen.
The weather has set in very cold and the Elbe is nearly frozen over. It is impossible to go out of the house without a Pelz or cloak lined with fur; for otherwise, on leaving a room heated by a stove, the effect of the cold is almost instantaneous and brings on an ague fit. This I attribute to the excessive heat kept up in the rooms and houses by the stoves. As smoking is so prevalent here, this contributes much also to keeping the body in a praeternatural heat and rendering it still more obnoxious to cold on removal from a room to the open air. It has been remarked by a medical author, in the Russian campaign in 1812, that the soldiers of the southern nations and provinces, viz., Provençaux, Gascons, Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese, endured the cold much better and suffered less from it than the Germans and Hollanders. The reason is sufficiently obvious: the former live in the open air even in the middle of winter and seldom make use of a fire to warm themselves; whereas the Germans and Dutch live in an atmosphere of stove-heat and smoke and seldom like to stir abroad in the open air during winter, unless necessity obliges them. Hence they become half-baked, as it were; their nerves are unstrung, their flesh flabby and they become so chilly, as to suffer from the smallest exposure to the atmosphere. In the houses in Germany, on account of the stoves, the cold is never felt, whereas it is very severely in Italy and Spain where many of the houses have no fireplaces. On this account I prefer Germany as a winter residence, for I think there is no sensation so disagreeable as to feel cold in the house. In the open air I do not care a fig for it, for my cloak lined with bearskin protects me amply. The climate here in winter is a dry cold, which is much more salubrious and agreeable to me than the changeable, humid climate of Great Britain, where, though the cold is not so great, it is much more severely felt.
[126] Tacitus, Germania, C, VIII.—ED.
[127] Martin Sherlock (d. 1797), author of Lettres d'un voyageur anglais, which were published in Paris 1779 and, the year after, in London.
[128] Matthew Gregory Lewis, 1775-1818, published Ambrosio or the Monk in 1795.—ED.
CHAPTER XVIII
MARCH-APRIL 1819
Journey from Dresden to Leipzig—The University of Leipzig—Liberal spirit—The English disliked in Saxony—The English Government hostile to liberty—Journey to Frankfort—From Frankfort to Metz and Paris—A.F. Lemaître—Bon voyage to the Allies—Return to England.