I met with my old friend, Sir W.I., who was travelling to Berlin, with the idea of passing the winter there and of proceeding in the summer to Moscow.  Thro’ the interests of my friends, Col.  D------ and Baron de F------ I have been ballotted for and admitted a member of a club or society here called the Ressource.  It is held in a large house on the Markt Platz, and is indeed a most agreeable resource to all foreigners; for ’tis in this society that they are likely to meet and form acquaintance with the noblesse, principal bourgeoisie and litterati.  It is conducted on the most liberal scale and not confined to those of birth and fortune.  Good character, polite behaviour and litterary requirements will ensure admittance to a candidate.  This society consists of members and honorary members; among the honorary members are foreigners and others whose stay in Dresden is short; but whoever remains for more than one year must cease to be an honorary member and must be ballotted for in order to become a permanent member, and should he be blackballed he ceases to belong to the society altogether.  This is a very good regulation.  A year is a sufficient time of proof for the character and conduct of a person, and should he during this interval prove himself obnoxious to the members of the society, they can at its expiration exclude him for ever afterwards.

No enquiry is made as to the character and conduct of a person who is admitted as an honorary member:  it is sufficient that he be recommended by a permanent member, which is deemed a sufficient guarantee for his respectability.  In this society there are dining rooms, billiard rooms, card rooms, a large reading room.  Here too is a small but well chosen library and three or four newspapers in every European language; all the German newspapers and reviews and the principal periodical works in the German, French, English and Italian languages.  The English papers taken in here are the Times, Courier and Chronicle.  Of the French, the Moniteur, Journal des Debats, Constitutionel, Journal du Commerce, Gazette de France and Gazette de Lausanne, and of the Italian the Gazette di Milano, di Venezia, di Firenze and di Lugano.  Every German newspaper is, I believe, to be found here.  The Society lay in their stock of wine, which is of the best quality; good cooks and servants are kept.  Dinners go forward from one to three.  You dine a la carte and pay the amount of what you call for to the waiters.  Coffee, liqueurs and all sorts of refreshments are likewise to be had.  Supper, likewise a la carte, goes forward between nine and eleven.  The evening before supper may be employed, if you chuse, in cards, billiards, or reading.  Very pleasant and useful acquaintances are made at the Ressource, since if a foreigner renders himself agreeable to the gentlemen who frequent this society, they generally propose taking