fostering elegant tastes in their subjects.

There is a watering-place near the latter house, and preparations were
making for the King to dine there, with a party of his own choosing.
This reminded us of our own dinner, which had been ordered at six, and
we returned to eat it. While sitting at a window, waiting the service,
a carriage that drove up attracted my attention. It was a large and
rather elegant post chariot, as much ornamented as comported with the
road, and having a rich blazonry. A single female was in it, with a maid
and valet in the rumble. The lady was in a cap, and, as her equipage
drove up, appeared to be netting. I have frequently met German families
travelling along the highway in this sociable manner, apparently as much
at home as when they were under the domestic roof. This lady, however,
had so little luggage, that I was induced to enquire who it might be.
She was a Princess of Hechingen, a neighbouring state, that had just
trotted over probably to take tea with some of her cousins of
Wurtemberg.

These _quasi_ kingdoms are so diminutive that this sort of intercourse
is very practicable, and (a pure conjecture) it may be that German
etiquette, so notoriously stiff and absurd, has been invented to prevent
the intercourse from becoming too familiar. The mediatising system,
however, has greatly augmented the distances between the capitals,
though, owing to some accidental influence, there is still here and
there a prince, that might be spared, whose territories have been
encircled, without having been absolutely absorbed, by those who have
been gainers by the change. Bavaria has risen to be a kingdom of four
millions of souls, in this manner; and the Dukes of Wurtemberg have
become kings, though on a more humble scale, through the liberality or
policy of Napoleon. The kingdom of the latter contains the two
independent principalities of Hohenzollern (spared on account of some
family alliances, I believe) in its bosom. One of the princes of the
latter family is married to a Mademoiselle Murat, a niece of Joachim.

After dinner we went again to the garden, where we accidentally were
witnesses of the return of the royal party from their pic-nic. The King
drove the Queen in a pony phaeton, at the usual pace of monarchs, or
just as fast as the little animals could put foot to the ground. He was
a large and well-whiskered man, with a strong family likeness to the
English princes. The attendants were two