1832.] [ 625 ] 



ANECDOTES OF GERMAN COURTS. 



THE various tongued denizens of earth who had crowded Frankfort 

 during the great fair were fast returning to their distant homes, the well 

 filled table d'htite at the Romischer Kaiser was now reduced to a few 

 members of the corps diplomatique. " See that my passport is en regie 

 for Vienna/' said I to the Kellner, " for Frankfort has now become into- 

 lerably dull." 



As the traveller journies towards Saxony, the face of the country under- 

 goes a marked change ; the vine clad heights of the Mein gave place to 

 the dark ridges of the Thuringian forest, between which and the foot 

 of the Ezegibirge, extend the dominions of a crowd of petty princes, 

 who, by their family influence or political services, have saved their insig- 

 nificant independencies from the mediatising ban of the German confede- 

 ration. 



My travelling companion was an old Dutch colonel, the Baron Van 



S . He had made thirty campaigns, and the wild uncertainty of a 



camp life had given to him that happy constitutional indifference which 

 philosophy in vain aspires to. A vein of military pedantry ran through 

 his conversation, but this was enlivened by such shrewd and profound 

 observations on men and things, such a fund of anecdote, as taught me 

 that the Baron had moved no inattentive observer on the great theatre of 

 events on which he had played his part. " In whose dominions are we 

 at present " said I to the post-master at Lebenstein, for in the course of 

 our morning's ride, we had passed through half-a-dozen states. " In those 

 of his Serene Highness of Saxe Meinengen/' was the reply. I confess I 

 felt a little curious to visit the state that was likely to have the honour of 

 one day giving a Queen to England. We therefore proceeded straight to 

 the capital, and little time it took us to get there. 



The town of Saxe Meinengen is situated on the right bank of the 

 Warre, beautifully embosomed in hills, it is rather handsomely built, and 

 is poetically called the City of the Harp. The population of the whole 

 state is about 40,000 souls, its revenue 30,OOOZ., and as a member of the 

 German Confederation it has one fifth of a vote. I gathered this important 

 statistical knowledge from the Court Almanack. What a ridiculous 

 *' spectacle politique' do these little petty German states present, with 

 their standing armies and all the attirail of a court. Here is the duchy 

 of Saxe Meinengen its whole population is inferior to that of a mo- 

 derately sized English town, and its entire revenue considerably less than 

 the pin money of our Queen. Such is the fact j an English town, con- 

 sidered unworthy of being represented in parliament, has double the popu- 

 lation, and centuple the wealth and intelligence of the duchy of Saxe 

 Meinengen, that has given to us a Queen who has shewn so much elevated 

 contempt for our Manchesters and Birminghams. An English hunter 

 would gallop round its territory in an hour ; an English nobleman must 

 be a skilful financier to subsist on its paltry revenue without running in 

 debt. 



" You are right," said the Baron, " but it was still worse in the time of 

 the old German confederation. In fact the state we are now in is a 

 mighty empire compared to the Lilliputian dominions of many of these 

 princes, whose military contingent to the confederation was fixed at half a 



