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148 RIESBECK’S TRAVELS THROUGH GERMANY.
overgrown fortunes. The money in circulation is for the moft part thrown into motion
by the induftry of the people, a thing which, more than any thing elfe, diftinguifhes this
place from Vienna and Munich, which fubfift only by the expences of the court, and the
vices of the nobility.
This fingle town contains more manufacturers and ufeful artifts than all Bavaria.
They make a large quantity of ferges, woollen, and filk cloths, &c. with which they
carry on a great trade all through Germany. As the money is got by fuch hard labour
itis not matter of wonder that they fhould be {paring of it.
The circumftances which the country was in during the reign of the late Ele€or, are
by no means the moft favourable to political profperity. They remind one of a body
which takes too much food and too little exercife, for the fluids to be equally diftributed
through the feveral canals. Some of the inhabitants of the place with whom I have
talked on the fubjeét, have been forced to allow, that even during the time in which
the court was inits greateft fplendour, there was much more poverty amongtt the lower
claffes than there is at prefent. The prodigality of the higher orders had tainted their
inferiors, and the eafe with which it was to be got leffened the value of money in the
eyes of the poffeffors. The greatelt part of it went to foreigners, without firft circu-
lating, as it fhould have done, amongft the natives. Flatterers, pimps, whores, pro-
jectors, dancers, fingers, and the like, divided the booty of the court amongft them, and
carried the greateft part of it out of the country ; only thofe who were near the court
partook in any confiderable degree of the {poils ; the remainder was loft in fo many nar-
row channels, that the greateft part of the people never got a fhare of it. Indeed Munich
is a vifible inftance in our own day how little even the moft unlimited paflion of a-court
for pleafure and expence can contribute tp the well-being and true happinefs of the ins
habitants of a great city. Iam ready, however, to allow that there is lefs mirth here
than there was formerly ; at leaft it is certain that the natural good humour and jo-
vialty, which nature has given to thefe people, is often clouded over with acertain me-
lancholy ; this may be occafioned, as at Paris, by the recollection of their great debts,
but I rather think it is owing to their uncommon and extraordinary ceconomy, and the
reftraint this throws on the freedom of their minds. It is, however, certainly in confe-
quence of this provident caft, that there is more true pleafure to be met with here than
in any town of Germany I have hitherto vifited. The people of Vienna and Munich
know no other delight than to fill their paunches, divert themfelves with the nonfenfe of
a harlequin, and play at nine pins. All the gardens of the inns of Vienna are laid out
in bowling-greens ; I reckoned twenty of them in one garden. Here they know how
to mix intellectual pleafures with fenfual ones. They, like us, are in the habit of making
{mall country parties, and have a tafte for the various beauties of nature ; even among{t
the middling ranks there is a tafte for the fine arts, and reading is almoft univerfal;
nor is the latter, as in the fouthern parts of Germany, confined within the narrow
bounds of plays and romances, but it extends to good books of hiftory, morality, and
other important fubjeéts. The fociety of nobles have a reader with a title and appoint-
ments. I think Mr. Pilati’s obfervation of the difference there is betwixt the Proteftant
and Catholic parts of Germany in this refpeét a very juft one: he fays, that the young
men of twenty in the former know more than many old literati by profeflion do in the
latter. The difference ftruck ne fo much that I felt as if I had juft come out of Spain
into France. All that they are endeayouring with fo much clatter to introduce into the
{chools of Vienna, feems to have been done here fome generations ago. A few days
fince, I vifited a fchool ina village at a little diftance from the town, and found more
order and real inftruction in it than im the belt fchools at Vienna. ‘The moft ordinary
people
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