RIESBECIt’s TRAVELS THROUGH GERMANY.

35

The remainder of the inhabitants are immerfed in the mod fcandalous debauch.Every night the ftreets re-echo with the noife of drunkards iffuing from the numeroustaverns, where they have been revelling and dancing. Whoever is at all noble heremud keep his miftrefs; the red indulge in promifcuous love. In this relpefl; thingsare not much better in the country.

Bavaria , indeed, well ueferves the character given it by an officer of GafcOny, ofbeing the greated brothel in the world.

The country people are extremely dirty. A few miles didant from the capital, onewould hardly take the hovels of the peafants for the habitations of men. Many ofthem have large puddles before the doors of their houfes, and are obliged to ftep overplanks into them. The thatched roofs of the country people, in many parts of France ,have a much better appearance, than the miferable huts of the Bavarian peafants ; theroofs of which are covered with (tones, in order that the dates may not be carried awayby the wind. Mean as this looks, cheap as nails are in the country, and often as halfthe roofs are torn away by ftrong winds, yet cannot the rich fanner be perfuaded tonail his (hingles properly together. In fliort, from the court to the fmalleft cottage,indolence is the molt predominant part of the character of the Bavarian .

This great indolence is contrafted, in an extraordinary manner, with a dill higherdegree of bigotry.—I happened to droll into a dark, black country beer-houfe, filledwith clouds of tobacco, and on entering was almod dunned with the noife of thedrinkers. By degrees, however, my eyes penetrated through the thick vapours, whenI difcovered the pried of the place in the middle of fifteen or twenty drunken fellows.His black coat was jud as much bedaubed as the frocks of his flock, and like the red ofthem, he had cards in his left hand, which he druck fo forcibly on the dirty table, thatthe whole chamber trembled. At fird, I was (hocked at the violent abufe they gaveeach other,.and thought they were quarrelling; but foon found that all the blackguardappellations which (hocked me were only modes of friendly falutation among them.Every one of them had now drank his fix or eight pots of beer, and they defired thelandlord to give each a dram of brandy, by way, they faid, of locking the domach.But now their good humour departed, and I presently faw,, in all their looks and gef-tures, the mod lerious preparation for a fray. This at length broke out. At fird the/ pried took vain pains to fupprefs it. He fwore and roared at lad as much as the red.

Now one feized a pot and threw it at his adverfary’s head, another clenched his fid,

- a third pulled the legs from a dool to knock his enemy on the head. Every thing, inIhort, feemed to fpeak blood and death ; when, on the ringing of the bell for evening

prayer, ‘ Ave Maria, ye-!’ cried the pried, and down dropped their arms, they

pulled off their bonnets, folded their hands, and repeated their Ave Marias. It put me-in mind of the adventure in Don Quixote , where peace is fuddenly redored in the greatfray, on account of the helmet of Mambrino, and the afs’s collar, by the recolle£lion ofwhat paffed in the Agramantine camp. As foon, however, as prayers were over, theywere all feized again with their former fury, which was the more violent from the mo*mentary interruption it had met with. Pots and glaffes began to fly. I obferved thecurate creep under the table for fecurity, and I withdrew into the landlord’s bed-chamber.

Ihe fame feenes occur in the inland towns among the citizens.' officers, clergymen,and dudents. They all falute each other with abufive language; all vie in hard drink-ing; and clofe to every church, which are fcarce lefs than 23,700, there is regularlya beer-houfe and a brothel A dudent at the univerfity of Ingolddadt mud carry athick cudgel, and wear a neat cut hat; he mud be able to drink from eight to ten

f 2 quarts