Another Proof And A Still Stronger One Of The Great Integrity And
Honor Of This Excellent Prince, Is, That When Napoleon Offered To Mediatize
In His Favor The Various Ducal Houses In Saxony, Such As Weimar, Gotha,
Cobourg, Etc., And To Annex These Countries To His Dominions, He Declined
The Offer.
Would Prussia, Austria, or Hanover have been so scrupulous?
The young ladies here, tho' well versed and delighting in various branches
of litterature, cannot overcome that strong national propensity to tales
and romances wherein the terrific and supernatural abounds; in all their
romances accordingly this taste prevails strongly; nay, even in some of the
romances, where the scene is laid in later times, there is some such
anachronism as the story of a spectre.
I recollect reading a novel, the scene of which is laid in Italy about the
time of the battle of Marengo, wherein a ghost is introduced who
contributes mainly to the unravelling of the piece. A young lady here of
considerable talent and of general information confessed to me, when I
asked her, what subjects pleased her most in the way of reading, that
nothing gave her so much delight as "Geistergeschichten." Lewis' romance
of "The Monk" is a great favorite in Germany.[128] By the bye, his
poetical tale of Alonzo and Imogen is evidently taken from a similar
subject in the Volks-maehrchen.
The weather has set in very cold and the Elbe is nearly frozen over. It is
impossible to go out of the house without a Pelz or cloak lined with fur;
for otherwise, on leaving a room heated by a stove, the effect of the cold
is almost instantaneous and brings on an ague fit.
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