Of all the German females, the ladies of Saxony are the most amiable.
Their persons are so superiorly charming and preferable in whatever can
recommend them to be notice of mankind, that the German youth often
visit Saxony in quest of _companions_ for life. Exclusive of their
beauty and comeliness of appearance, they are brought up in a knowledge
of all those arts, both useful and ornamental, which are so brilliant an
addition to their native attractions. But what chiefly enhances their
value, and gives it reality and duration, is a _sweetness_ of temper and
festivity of disposition, that never fail to endear them on a very
slight acquaintance. To crown all, they are generally patterns of
conjugal tenderness and fidelity.
As they are commonly careful to improve their minds by reading and
instructive conversation, they have no small share of facetiousness and
ingenuity. From their innate liveliness, they are extremely addicted to
all the gay kind of amusements. They excel in the allurements of dress
and decoration, and are in general skilful in music.
The character, however, of the women in most other parts of Germany,
particularly of the Austrian, is very different from this.
Notwithstanding the advantages of size and make, their looks and
features, though not unsightly, betray a vacancy of that life and
spirit, without which beauty is uninteresting, and, like a mere picture,
becomes utterly void of that indication of sensibility, which alone can
awaken a delicacy of feeling.
As their education is conducted by the rules of the grossest
superstition, and they are taught little else than set forms of
devotion, they arrive to the years of maturity uninstructed in the use
of reason, and usually continue profoundly ignorant the remainder of
their days, which are spent, or rather loitered away, in apathy and
indolence.
The principal happiness of the Austrian ladies of fashion consists in
ruminating on the dignity of their birth and families, the antiquity of
their race, the rank they hold, the respect attached to it, and the
prerogatives they enjoy over the inferior classes, whom they treat with
the utmost superciliousness, and hold in the most unreasonable contempt.
In the mean time, their domestic affairs are condemned to the most
unaccountable neglect. They dwell at home, careless of what passes
there; and suffer disorder and confusion to prevail, without feeling the
least uneasiness. Great frequenters of churches, their piety consists in
the strictest conformity to all the externals of religion. They profess
the most boundless belief in all the silly legends with which their
treatises of devotion are filled; and these are the only books they ever
read. The coldness of their constitution occasions a species of
regulated gallantry, which is rather the effect of an opinion that it
is an appendage of high life, than the result of their natural
inclination.
It must, at the same time be allowed, that the Austrian women are
endowed with a great fund of sincerity and candor; and, though too much
on the reserve, and prone to keep at an unnecessary distance, are yet
capable of the truest attachment, and always warm and zealous in the
cause of those whom they have admitted to their friendship.
Though the Germans are rather a dull and phlegmatic people, and not
greatly enslaved by the warmer passions, yet at the court of Vienna they
are much given to intrigue: and an amour is so far from being
scandalous, that a woman gains credit by the rank of her gallant, and is
reckoned silly and unfashionable if she scrupulously adheres to the
virtue of chastity. But such customs are more the customs of courts,
than of places less exposed to temptation, and consequently less
dissolute; and we are well assured that in Germany there are many women
who do honor to humanity, not by chastity only, but also by a variety of
other virtues.
The ladies at the principal courts, differ not much in their dress from
the French and English. They are not, however, so excessively fond of
paint as the former. At some courts, they appear in rich furs: and all
of them are loaded with jewels, if they can obtain them. The female part
of the burgher's families, in many of the German towns, dress in a very
different manner, and some of them inconceivably fantastic, as may be
seen in many prints published in books of travels. But, in this respect,
they are gradually reforming, and many of them make quite a different
appearance in their dress from what they did thirty or forty years ago.
The inhabitants of Vienna lived luxuriously, a great part of their time
being spent in feasting and carousing. In winter, when the different
branches of the Danube are frozen over, and the ground covered with
snow, the ladies take their recreation in sledges of different shapes,
such as griffins, tigers, swans, scallop-shells, etc. Here the lady
sits, dressed in velvet lined with rich furs, and adorned with laces and
jewels, having on her head a velvet cap. The sledge is drawn by one
horse, stag or other creature, set off with plumes of feathers, ribbons
and bells. As this diversion is taken chiefly in the night time,
servants ride before the sledge with torches; and a gentleman, standing
on the sledge behind, guides the horse.