to the great Congress. First appeared the ambitious and ostentatious
Frederic, Elector of Brandenburg, who, a few years later, took the
title of King of Prussia. Then arrived the young Elector of Bavaria,
the Regent of Wirtemberg, the Landgraves of Hesse Cassel and Hesse
Darmstadt, and a long train of sovereign princes, sprung from the
illustrious houses of Brunswick, of Saxony, of Holstein, and of Nassau.
The Marquess of Gastanaga, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands, repaired
to the assembly from the viceregal Court of Brussels. Extraordinary
ministers had been sent by the Emperor, by the Kings of Spain, Poland,
Denmark, and Sweden, and by the Duke of Savoy. There was scarcely room
in the town and the neighbourhood for the English Lords and gentlemen
and the German Counts and Barons whom curiosity or official duty had
brought to the place of meeting. The grave capital of the most thrifty
and industrious of nations was as gay as Venice in the Carnival. The
walks cut among those noble limes and elms in which the villa of the
Princes of Orange is embosomed were gay with the plumes, the stars,
the flowing wigs, the embroidered coats and the gold hilted swords of
gallants from London, Berlin and Vienna. With the nobles were mingled
sharpers not less gorgeously attired than they. At night the hazard
tables were thronged; and the theatre was filled to the roof. Princely
banquets followed one another in rapid succession. The meats were
served in gold; and, according to that old Teutonic fashion with which
Shakspeare had made his countrymen familiar, as often as any of the
great princes proposed a health, the kettle drums and trumpets sounded.
Some English lords, particularly Devonshire, gave entertainments
which vied with those of Sovereigns. It was remarked that the German
potentates, though generally disposed to be litigious and punctilious
about etiquette, associated, on this occasion, in an unceremonious
manner, and seemed to have forgotten their passion for genealogical and
heraldic controversy. The taste for wine, which was then characteristic
of their nation, they had not forgotten. At the table of the Elector
of Brandenburg much mirth was caused by the gravity of the statesmen of
Holland, who, sober themselves, confuted out of Grotius and Puffendorf
the nonsense stuttered by the tipsy nobles of the Empire. One of those
nobles swallowed so many bumpers that he tumbled into the turf fire, and
was not pulled out till his f