148 RIESBECK’s TRAVELS THROUGH GERMANY .

overgrown fortunes. The money in circulation is for the mod part thrown into motionby the induftry of the people, a thing which, more than any thing elfe, didinguifhes thisplace from Vienna and Munich , which fubfift only by the expences of the court, and thevices of the nobility. _

This fingle town contains more manufacturers and ufeful artids than all Bavaria .They make a large quantity of ferges, woollen, and fdk cloths, &c. with which theycarry on a great trade all through Germany . As the money is got by fuch hard labourit is not matter of wonder that they fhould be fparing of it.

The circumdances which the country was in during the reign of the late Elector, areby no means the mod favourable to political profperity. They remind one of a bodywhich takes too much food and too little exercife, for the fluids to be equally didributedthrough the feveral canals. Some of the inhabitants of the place with whom I havetalked on the fubjeft, have been forced to allow, that even duringghe time in whichthe court was in its greated fplendour, there was much more poverty amongd the lowerclaffes than there is at prefent. The prodigality of the higher orders had tainted theirinferiors, and the eafe with which it was to be got leffened the value of money in theeyes of the poffefiors. The greated part of it went to foreigners, without fird circu-lating, as it fhould have done, amongd the natives. Flatterers, pimps, whores, pro-jectors, dancers, fingers, and the like, divided the booty of the court amongd them, andcarried the greated part of it out of the country ; only thole who were near the courtpartook in any confiderable degree of the fpoils ; the remainder was lofl in fo many nar-row channels, that the greated part of the people never got a fhare of it. Indeed Munich is a vifible indance in our own day how little even the mod unlimited paffion of a courtfor pleafure and expence can contribute to the well-being and true happinefs of the in-habitants of a great city. I am ready, however, to allow that there is lefs mirth herethan there was formerly ; at lead it is certain that the natural good humour and jo-vialty, which nature has given to thefe people, is often clouded over with a certain 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 oeconomy, and theredraint this throws on the freedom of their minds. It is, however, certainly in confe-quence of this provident cad, that there is more true pleafure to be met with here thanin any town of Germany I have hitherto viflted. The people of Vienna and Munich know no other delight than to fill their paunches, divert themfelves with the nonfenfe ofa harlequin, and play at nine pins. All the gardens of the inns of Vienna are laid outin bowling-greens ; I reckoned twenty of them in one garden. Here they know howto mix intellectual pleafures with fenfual ones. They, like us, are in the habit of makingfmall country parties, and have a lade for the various beauties of nature ; even amongdthe middling ranks there is a tade for the fine arts, and reading is almod univerfal;nor is the latter, as in the fouthern parts of Germany , confined within the narrowbounds of plays and romances, but it extends to good books of hidory, morality, andother important fubjeCts. 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 theProtedantand Catholic parts of Germany in this refpeCf a very jud one : he fays, that the youngmen of twenty in the former know more than many old literati by profeflion do in thelatter. The difference druck me fo much that I felt as if I had jud come out of Spain into France . All that they are endeavouring with fo much clatter to introduce into thefchools of Vienna , feems to have been done here fome generations ago. A few daysfince, I vifited a fchool in a village at a little didance from the town, and found moreorder and real inftruction in it than in the bed fchools at Vienna . The mod ordinary

people