is more common than
to be acquainted with a lady without knowing her husband, or visiting
the husband without ever seeing his wife.

GERMAN WOMEN.

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