so
that people could promenade on it, and cabins, with windows and some
furniture. An ever-changing and agreeable society was to be found
collected there, as many besides travellers on business used them; for
Germans, after 1750, had made a most remarkable progress; the love of
nature had attained a great development. The English landscape
gardening took the place of the Italian and French architectural
gardens, and the old Robinsonades were followed by descriptions of
loving children, or savages in an enchanting and strange landscape. The
German, later than the highly-cultivated Englishman, was seized with
the love of wandering in distant countries; but it had only lately
become an active feeling. It was now the fashion to admire on the
mountains the rising sun and the floating mist in the valleys; and the
pastoral life with butter and honey, mountain prospects, the perfume of
the woods, the flowers of the meadows, and ruins, were extolled, in
opposition to the commonplace pleasures of play, operas, comedies, and
balls. Already did the language abound in rich expressions, describing
the beauties of nature, the mountains, waterfalls, &c.; and already did
laborious travellers explore not only the Alps, but the Apennines and
Etna; but the Tyrol was hardly known.

It was still easy to discover by his dialect, even in the centre of
Germany, to what province the most highly-educated man belonged; for
the language of family life, giving expression to the deepest feelings
of the heart, was full of provincial peculiarities, and those were
called affected and new-fangled who accustomed themselves to pronounce
words as they were written. Indeed, in the north, as in the south, it
was considered patriotic to preserve the native dialect pure; the young
ladies of some of the best families formed an alliance to defend the
dialect of their city from the bold inroads of the foreigners, who had
come to settle there. It was said, to the credit of Electoral Saxony,
that it was the only part where even in the lowest orders intelligible
German was spoken. A praise that is undoubtedly justified by the
prevalence for three centuries of the Upper Saxon dialect in the
written language, which is worthy of our observation, as it gives us an
idea how the others must have spoken.

In 1790, one might assume that a city community, which was reputed to
have made any progress, was situated in a Protestant district; for it
was evident to every travelle