Dresden; and Napoleon took up his grand position the whole length of the Elbe, from the mountains of Bohemia to Hamburgh, thus covering the whole of Saxony with his army.  Austria however at last comes forward to join the coalition.  Fortune changes; the Saxon troops, tired of beholding their country the perpetual theatre of war and trusting to the generosity of the Allies, go over to them in the middle of a battle, and decide, thereby, the fate of the day at Leipzig.  The King of Saxony is made a prisoner, and then he is punished for what he could not help.  Why was he to be punished more than any other member of the Confederation of the Rhine?  One would think that the seasonable defection of his troops at Leipzig should have induced the Allies to treat him with moderation.  The other States of the Confederation did not abandon Napoleon until after he was completely beaten at Leipzig; and Austria refused to accede to the coalition until a carte blanche was given her to help herself in Italy.

Let every impartial man therefore review the whole of this proceeding and then say whether the King of Saxony, so proverbial for his probity, so adored by his subjects, deserved to be insulted by such an unfeeling letter as that of Castlereagh.  No! the King of Saxony better deserves to reign than any King of them all.  Would they had even a small share of his virtues!  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.