still standing; but it is proposed to free from brick and mortar the
entrances which are too narrow for men and waggons, and to substitute
light iron trellis-work, and in other places to open new gates in the
walls. The rampart round the city moat has been planted with pollards,
and in the thick shade of the limes and chestnuts the citizens take
their constitutional walks, and the children of the lower orders
breathe the fresh summer air. The small gardens on the city walls are
embellished; new foreign blossoms shine amongst the old, and cluster
round some fragment of a column or a small wooden angel that is painted
white; here and there a summer-house rises, either in the form of an
antique temple or as a hut of moss-covered bark, as a remembrance of
the original state of innocence of the human race, in which the
feelings were so incomparably purer and the restraints of dress and
_convenances_ were so much less.

But the traffic of the city has extended itself beyond the old walls,
where a high road leads to the city, and suburban rows of houses
stretch far into the plain. Many new houses, with red-tiled roofs under
loaded fruit-trees, delight the eyes. The number of houses in the city
has also increased; leaning with broad fronts, gable to gable, there
they stand, with large windows and open staircases enclosing wide
spaces. The ornaments that adorn the front are still modestly made of
plaster of Paris; bright lime-washes of all shades are almost the only
characteristics, and give the streets a variegated appearance. They
are, for the most part, built by merchants and manufacturers, who are
now almost everywhere the wealthy people of the city.

The wounds inflicted by the Seven Years' War on the prosperity of the
citizens are healed. Not in vain have the police, for more than fifty
years, admonished and commanded; the city arrangements are well
regulated; provisions for the care of the poor are organised, funds for
their maintenance, doctors, and medicine supplied gratuitously. In the
larger cities much is done for the support of the infirm; in Dresden,
in 1790, the yearly amount of funds for the poor was 50,000 thalers; in
Berlin also, where Frederic William had done much for the poor, the
government warmly participated in rendering assistance,--it was
reported that more was done there than elsewhere. But the benevolence
which the educated classes evinced towards the people was deficient in
judgment--alms-giving wa