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EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM DRESDEN. 



THE Gallery here is very splendid. It contains a world of pictures, 

 a few of them are universally allowed to be the best the art has 

 produced; but they are ill arranged and badly preserved, or rather 

 not preserved at all, for many are rotting on the walls, others are 

 perishing from damp, and all look dull and dead for want of varnish. 

 A thorough reformation is wanted and wished for, as well by foreign- 

 ers as natives, but the government profess to be too poor to undertake 

 the relining, repairing, refraining, revarnishing, and renovating that 

 is necessary. In another fifty years they will have none to preserve. 

 The religion of the people of Saxony is Lutheran, while that of the 

 court is Catholic, yet they never clash; and although the royal family 

 are great bigots, and the last king in particular, who died a few months 

 ago, and who did nothing but confess and hear mass ; yet he had the 

 good policy to let his people go to heaven their own way. It would 

 be hard indeed if they were to lose the rights for which their ances- 

 tors struggled so long and so ardently with the armies of Charles V. 

 In going over the Rustkammer, which is the first collection of 

 armour in Europe, I was much interested in the few relics that have 

 been preserved of the great champion of the reformation, Maurice of 

 Saxony, whose name and memory all good Protestants love and 

 revere. There were others of Augustus the Strong, who could snap 

 horse-shoes asunder and roll up a thick silver plate as easily as 

 another would a sheet of paper, and whose weapons were of such a 

 weight as the degenerate moderns are unable to wield. In the last 

 room I noticed a pair of modern-looking boots, somewhat the worse 

 for wear, in a glass-case in a corner. They appeared rather out of 

 place amidst the arms of the Crusaders, and helmets and horse- 

 trappings of the olden time. I found they had belonged to Napoleon 

 Buonaparte, and had been worn by him when Dresden was his head 

 quarters, during his last German campaign, in 1813. 



There are a great number of English here, and amongst them two 

 or three families I knew in Italy, while at Vienna there is scarcely 



a single Englishman now I have left, for I don't count L as any 



body, because he is such a disagreeable fellow. 



I am disappointed with the neighbourhood of Dresden, which I 

 had expected to fiud much more beautiful than it is. The scenery 

 is pretty, but tame, and bears no comparison with the varied 

 and picturesque environs of Vienna no more than the placid and 

 tranquil waters of the Elbe do with the broad expanse and rapid 

 rushings of the mighty Danube. There is no end to amusements at 

 Vienna; the suburbs abound with extensive gardens, well laid out, 

 and they are all gratis and always open ; and when sometimes they 

 have bands and fetes the expense of entrance is so trifling that all 

 can afford to go. The Viennese dearly love to amuse themselves, 

 and think and care about little else, and certainly there is no other 

 town in Europe that would answer their purpose so well as their own. 

 Living is very cheap here. I get an excellent dinner at a table 

 d'hote for one-third of a thaler, or about a shilling English. I might 

 dine for less, but I like to fare sumptuously every day, and for dining 

 cheap and well commend me to a German table d'hote. 



