RIESBECK’s TRAVELS THROUGH GERMANY.
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You know that I commonly travel on foot when I cannot get into a public landor water carriage; but thefe are inexpreflibly pleafant to me on account of thecompany I meet in them, even fhould that company happen to confift only of Jews ,Capuchins, and old women.
You know too that I am enough a citizen of the world to find fome good out of myown country, and not to be outrageoufly out of humour when all is not as it is at home.
You may depend on receiving one letter at lead every week, in which you will havean account either of a German town or of fome part of the country. General obfer-vations I muft, of courfe, defer to the end, when I fhall have put together the fevernlbroken parts of the narrative. I fhall not trouble you with any of the nonfenfe whichyou muft have enough of in our daily publications.
LETTER II.
I HOPE that you received my letter of the third, which was intended as a kind ofintroduftion to our future correfpondence. Though I know how odious letter-writingis to you, I muft neverthelefs infift on an anfwer to every fix ©f mine, and if you cannotbring yourfelf to fit down to work, defire Nannette to do it for you.—But to my diary :As I was getting into the poft-waggon at Strafburg, who fhould come in, in a poft-chaife
and four, but Mr. B-! No doubt, you muft have feen him at Paris at Madame
H-’s. ‘Whither,’ fays he, ‘fo faft?’ ‘ A pilgrimage through Germany, ’
fays I. ‘ Out upon the ftupid country,’ fays he;’ I have juft travelled over it, but intruth it is not worth the trouble.’ At firft I thought that he muft at leaft have madefome flay in fome of the principal German towns; but when I came to enquire, I foundthat what he called having travelling over the ftupid country, was a fmall excurfion fromSwitzerland, through part of Suabia and Bavaria, as far as Munich , and from thenceinto France again by Augfburg, Ulm and Friburg . As there happened to be a map ofGermany behind the door of the poft-houfe, with the point of my fword I traced theparts of the country he had been over, and fhewed him, that far from having travelledthrough Germany , he had fcarce feen any part of it; but this did not affeft him at all;
‘ Go you,* fays he, ‘ go you ; for my part I have feen it.*
My company confifted of a wine merchant from Ulm, with a melancholy face, whowas always fhaking his lips as if he had tafted four wine, and an elderly lady, who faidIhe was hired as a governefs in a great houfe at Vienna . As neither of thefe compa-nions had any peculiar charms for me, I amufed myfelf as we travelled along the banksof the Rhine , with confidering the idea perfons who live in the great Parifian world en-tertain of what they call with us le Nord. 1 had been led into this by the gafconade of
M. B-, and the fight of the German poft-map. Here, then, thought I to myfelf,
(as I run over in my mind that track of country which reaches from the fpot I was thenon to the frozen fea,) in ancient times dwelt the Cimbri, the Goths, the Franks , theSaxons, the Suabians, and the Allemanni ; and here now are the Swedes, the Pruffians,and the Ruffians ; and all this great country, together with the formidable pofleffors ofit, we difpofe of in a word that conveys much the fame ideas to the readers as les PaisBas, the low countries. Les Pais Bas and the Nord, a Frenchman confiders as only fomany dependencies on the omnipotent France . There is really nothing to be faid tothis but what Triftram Shandy fays upon a like occafion: ‘ The French have a pleafantway of treating all great matters.’ I could not help laughing inwardly as thefe thoughts
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