a week long,
for which the people paid with their money, when the poor wretches had it;
with their bodies and very blood when they had none; being sold in
thousands by their lords and masters, who gaily dealt in soldiers, staked
a regiment upon the red at the gambling-table; swapped a battalion against
a dancing-girl's diamond necklace; and, as it were, pocketed their people.

As one views Europe, through contemporary books of travel in the early
part of the last century, the landscape is awful--wretched wastes, beggarly
and plundered; half-burned cottages and trembling peasants gathering
piteous harvests; gangs of such tramping along with bayonets behind them,
and corporals with canes and cats-of-nine-tails to flog them to barracks.
By these passes my lord's gilt carriage floundering through the ruts, as
he swears at the postilions, and toils on to the Residenz. Hard by, but
away from the noise and brawling of the citizens and buyers, is
Wilhelmslust or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or Versailles--it scarcely
matters which--near to the city, shut out by woods from the beggared
country, the enormous, hideous, gilded, monstrous marble palace, where the
prince is, and the Court, and the trim gardens, and huge fountains, and
the forest where the ragged peasants are beating the game in (it is death
to them to touch a feather); and the jolly hunt sweeps by with its uniform
of crimson and gold; and the prince gallops ahead puffing his royal horn;
and his lords and mistresses ride after him; and the stag is pulled down;
and the grand huntsman gives the knife in the midst of a chorus of bugles;
and 'tis time the Court go home to dinner; and our noble traveller, it may
be the Baron of Poellnitz, or the Count de Koenigsmarck, or the excellent
Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the procession gleaming through the trim
avenues of the wood, and hastens to the inn, and sends his noble name to
the marshal of the Court. Then our nobleman arrays himself in green and
gold, or pink and silver, in the richest Paris mode, and is introduced by
the chamberlain, and makes his bow to the jolly prince, and the gracious
princess; and is presented to the chief lords and ladies, and then comes
supper and a bank at faro, where he loses or wins a thousand pieces by
daylight. If it is a German Court, you may add not a little drunkenness to
this picture of high life; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can
see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut f