During The Courtship The
Surest Sign That The Fair One Does Not Intend To Give Her Lover The
Basket Is When She Presents Him With A Bag To Hold His Tobacco.
Her
consent is implied thereby.
During the battle of Dresden, the slaughter in this garden was immense, and
the Allies were finally driven out of it. The gardener related to me an
affecting story of a young lady of Dresden, whose lover was killed in this
battle and buried in the Grosser Garten. She has taken it so much to
heart that she comes here three or four times in the week to visit this
grave and strew flowers over it. She remains for some time absorbed in
silent meditation and then withdraws. She has a settled melancholy, but it
has not yet affected her understanding.
DRESDEN, Oct. 15th.
I met with my old friend, Sir W.I., who was travelling to Berlin, with the
idea of passing the winter there and of proceeding in the summer to Moscow.
Thro' the interests of my friends, Col. D - - - and Baron de F - - - I have
been ballotted for and admitted a member of a club or society here called
the Ressource. It is held in a large house on the Markt Platz, and is
indeed a most agreeable resource to all foreigners; for 'tis in this
society that they are likely to meet and form acquaintance with the
noblesse, principal bourgeoisie and litterati. It is conducted on the
most liberal scale and not confined to those of birth and fortune. Good
character, polite behaviour and litterary requirements will ensure
admittance to a candidate. This society consists of members and honorary
members; among the honorary members are foreigners and others whose stay in
Dresden is short; but whoever remains for more than one year must cease to
be an honorary member and must be ballotted for in order to become a
permanent member, and should he be blackballed he ceases to belong to the
society altogether. This is a very good regulation. A year is a sufficient
time of proof for the character and conduct of a person, and should he
during this interval prove himself obnoxious to the members of the society,
they can at its expiration exclude him for ever afterwards.
No enquiry is made as to the character and conduct of a person who is
admitted as an honorary member: it is sufficient that he be recommended by
a permanent member, which is deemed a sufficient guarantee for his
respectability. In this society there are dining rooms, billiard rooms,
card rooms, a large reading room. Here too is a small but well chosen
library and three or four newspapers in every European language; all the
German newspapers and reviews and the principal periodical works in the
German, French, English and Italian languages. The English papers taken in
here are the Times, Courier and Chronicle. Of the French, the
Moniteur, Journal des Debats, Constitutionel, Journal du Commerce, Gazette
de France and Gazette de Lausanne, and of the Italian the Gazette di
Milano, di Venezia, di Firenze and di Lugano.
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