oath of allegiance, thus addressed Charles VI.: "The light of heaven is obscured by your Majesty's inimitable splendour. The universe is not spacious enough to be the scene of such events, when your most faithful and obedient Estates reach the height of happiness by casting themselves at the feet of your Majesty. The ancient golden age is iron in comparison with the present one illumined by the sun of our prosperity. Your faithful and submissive Estates would, on this account, have erected a splendid temple, like that of Augustus, consecrated to returning peace and prosperity, could any thing have been any where discovered that was not already possessed by your imperial Majesty." Conlin, in the notes to his Poetical Biography of Charles VI., gives an account of the reception of the empress at Linz, which is equally entertaining. In Vienna, the numerous sinecures enabled adventurers, the upper and lower lacqueys, to live a riotous life, which affected the morals of the people. Eating and drinking became an affair of the utmost importance; adultery and immorality among the nobility a mark of bon ton; the search after amusement the citizen's sole occupation. The Spanish austerity of the court had, notwithstanding, prevented immorality, under the name of philosophy, from supplanting religion, as had been the case in France. Frivolity was confined to the limits of a jest reconcilable with the established piety or rather bigotry, and thus came into vogue, Stranitzki, in the Leopoldstadt theatre, by means of this tone exciting the inextinguishable laughter of the populace, and Father Abraham making use of it in his sermons at Santa Clara.

Vienna, on the reconciliation between the emperor and the pope, was erected into a bishopric, A. D. 1772. The emperor, like his predecessors, was a slave to the priests and expended as much upon church festivals as upon court fêtes. The most extraordinary splendour was displayed in 1729, on the canonization of St. John von Nepomuk by the pope. The festival, which lasted eight days, was participated in by the whole of the Austrian monarchy, nay, by the whole of Catholic Christendom. Vienna was the scene of unusual pomp; the interior of St. Stephen's was hung with purple; the courtiers and citizens vied with each other in splendour. Almost the whole population of Bohemia poured into Prague; more than four hundred processions of townships bearing offerings, as to a pagan sa

crifice; Altbunzlau with garnets and rubies, Koenigsgrætz with pheasants, Chrudim with crystals, Czaslau with silver, Kaurziem with evergreen plants, Bechin with salmon, Prachin with pearls and gold sand, Pilsen with a white lamb, Saaz with ears of corn, Leitmeritz with wine, Rakonitz with salt, etc. The whole of the city and its innumerable towers were splendidly illuminated. An immense procession marched to Nepomuk, the saint's birth-place, with numbers of figures and pictures of the Virgin and saints, banners and dramatic representations, taken from the life of the saint.*- -At that pious period lived the Tyrolean Capuchin, Father Gabriel Pontifeser, who enjoyed great repute as confessor to Maria Anna, queen of Spain, consort to Charles II., the last of the Habsburg dynasty, but who refused every post of honour and contented himself with erecting a Capuchin monastery in his native town, Clausen, with Spanish gold. The queen adorned it with valuable pictures, etc., part of which were [A. D. 1809] carried to Munich. At that time also died at Cappel in the Pazuaunthal the pious pastor, Adam Schmid, who was so beloved by the people that numerous tapers are still kept burning around his tomb as around that of a saint.†

CCXXXII. The courts of Germany.

AUGUSTUS of Saxony expired A. D. 1733, leaving three hundred and fifty-two children, amongst whom, Maurice, known as the marshal of Saxony, the son of the beautiful Aurora, Countess of Koenigsmark,‡ equalled him in extraordinary physical strength and surpassed him in intellect, but, as a French general, turned the talents which, under other circumstances, he might have devoted to the service of his country, against Germany. Flemming, the powerful minister, also died, leaving sixteen million dollars, of which he had robbed the country, and half of which his widow was compelled to relinquish. The most notorious of the king's mistresses,

* See Schottky, The Carlovingian Age.

+ Beda, Weber's Tyrol.

"for

She was cold, intriguing, and busied herself, as her Memoirs show, with money matters. She became provostess of Quedlinburg, which," as Uffenbach writes in his Travels, "her fine, large, majestic figure, but not her well-known character, well suited."

*

Countess Cosel, had drawn from him twenty million dollars. Saxony had fallen a prey to the most depraved of both sexes. The whole of these shameful acts are recounted in the "Gallant Saxon" of Baron von Pöllnitz and in the Memoirs of the Margravine of Bayreuth. The descriptions of the fêtes given at Morizburg to the Countess Aurora von Konigsmark or in honour of foreign princes, his guests, graphically depicture the luxury of this royal debauché. Mythological representations were performed on an immense scale, festivals of Venus in the pleasure-gardens, festivals of Diana in the forests, festivals of Neptune on the Elbe, on which occasions a Venetian Bucentaur, frigates, brigantines, gondolas, and sailors dressed in satin and silk stockings, were paraded; festivals of Saturn in the Saxon mines; besides tournaments, peasants' fètes, fairs, masquerades, and fancy balls, in which the army as well as the whole court sustained a part. He kept Janissaries, Moors, Heiducks, Swiss, a name now signifying body-guardsmen or porters, and put the common soldiers and court-menials during the celebration of fêtes into such varied disguises, as, in a certain degree, to transform the whole country into a theatre. In Wackerbarth's biography, there is a description of a firework, for which eighteen thousand trunks of trees were used, and of a gigantic allegorical picture which was painted upon six thousand ells of cloth. One party of pleasure at Mühlberg cost six million dollars. Architecture was rendered subservient to these follies. The Japan palace alone contained genuine Chinese porcelain to the amount of a million dollars, besides sumptuous carpets composed of feathers. At Dresden, a hall is still shown completely furnished with the ostrich and heron plumes used at these fêtes. Luxury and a tasteless love of splendour were alone fostered by this unheard-of extravagance, and it was merely owing to a happy chance that the purchase of the Italian antiques and pictures, which laid the foundation to the magnificent Dresden gallery, flattered the pride of king Augustus. His private treasury, the celebrated green vaults, were, like his fêtes, utterly devoid of taste. There were to be seen immense heaps of precious stones, gold and silver, a room full of pearls, columns of ostriches' eggs, curious works of art, clocks, and all manner of toys, each of which cost enor

* Attendants in the Hungarian costume. TRANSLATOR.

mous sums.

One of these costly pieces, clever enough, reprecents a harlequin cudgelling a peasant, each of the figures being formed out of a single pearl of immense size. This was, in point of fact, the only relation between the prince and the people. The cries of the people were unheard; of the provincial Estates a servile committee alone acted; and Augustus, in the plenitude of his condescension, in return for the enormous contributions granted by his Estates, yielded, after a parley of twenty-nine years, to the desire of his people, and published new reformed regulations for the diet, intended to stop the mouths of all malcontents, which, with open mockery, he reserved to himself the power, "in his paternal love for his people, of altering and improving."

Augustus III., his son and successor on the throne of Saxony, although personally more temperate, allowed his favourite, Brühl, on whom he bestowed the dignity of Count, to continue the old system of dissipation. Brühl, who had an annual salary of 50,000 dollars, without reckoning the immense landed property bestowed upon him, erected his palace in the vicinity of the royal residence, and, like a major-domo or grand visir, surpassed his royal master in luxury of every description. He held a numerous court, and, as he ever placed his servants in the highest and most lucrative offices, the nobility contested for the honour of sending their sons, as pages, into his service. His wardrobe was the most magnificent in the empire; he had always a hundred pair of shoes, and other articles of dress in hundreds by him, all of which were made in Paris. He had a cabinet filled with Parisian perukes. Even the pastry on his table was sent from Paris. In order to raise the sums required for his maintenance, he seized all deposits, even the money belonging to wards, and, under the title of "contributions," made great loans from wealthy individuals, particularly at Leipzig, for which he gave bank-bills, which speedily fell so much in value as to be refused acceptance. He also established a general property tax and continually alienated crown property. He was, moreover, professionally a traitor to his country and sold his master to the highest bidder. At that period, the petty collateral Saxon line of Merseburg, founded, A. D. 1653, by Christian, a son of John George, became extinct. The last duke was such a fiddle-fancier that he was always accom

panied by a carriage filled with those instruments, and so imbecile, that his wanton consort, on the birth of an illegitimate child, pacified him by declaring that the infant had brought with it into the world a gigantic bass-viol, which she had ordered to be made for him.

The Saxon dukes of the Ernestine line were divided into several houses. Ernest, duke of Weimar, A. D. 1736, forbade his subjects "to reason under pain of correction." Frederick, duke of Gotha, gave the first example of the shameful traffic in men, afterwards so often imitated, by selling [A. D. 1733] four thousand impressed recruits to the emperor for 120,000 florins, and, in 1744, three regiments to the Dutch. He occupied Meiningen with his troops and supported the nobles in their rebellion against his cousin, Antony Ulric, who had persuaded the emperor to bestow upon his consort, Elisabeth Cæsar,* a handsome chambermaid, the rank of princess, and to declare his children capable of succeeding to his titles. The nobility triumphed, and the children were, by a shameful decree of the Estates of the empire, declared incapable of succeeding to their father's possessions; the hopes of Gotha were, nevertheless, frustrated, Antony Ulric instantly contracting a second marriage with a princess of Hesse, who brought him a numerous family.

In Bavaria, Maximilian Emanuel II. reigned until 1726. He was the author of great calamities. It was entirely owing to his disloyalty, to the treacherous diversion raised by him to the rear of the imperial army, that France was not completely beaten in the commencement of the war of succession. Nor was his close alliance with France merely transient, for, in the ensuing century, his became the ruling policy of almost every court in Western Germany. The elector, perverted by Villars and others of the French courtiers, solely made use of the French tongue, and, surrounded by female singers and dancing-girls, imitated every Parisian vice. His consort, Theresa Cunigunda, the daughter of Sobieski, the noble

* Frederick William, the reigning duke, Antony Ulric's elder brother, disapproved of this marriage, and, on the death of Elisabeth, who, happily for herself, died early, allowed her coffin to remain unburied, merely sprinkled over with sand. On his death, he was treated with similar indignity by his brother, who left both coffins standing side by side in this condition during a year.