AFTER five days travelling post, I could not sit down to write on any other occasion, than to tell my dear lady, that I have not forgot her obliging command, of sending her some account of my travels.  I have already passed a large part of Germany, have seen all that is remarkable in Cologn, Frankfort, Wurtsburg, and this place.  ’Tis impossible not to observe the difference between the free towns and those under the government of absolute princes, as all the little sovereigns of Germany are.  In the first, there appears an air of commerce and plenty.  The streets are well-built, and full of people, neatly and plainly dressed.  The shops are loaded with merchandise, and the commonalty are clean and cheerful.  In the other you see a sort of shabby finery, a number of dirty people of quality tawdered (sic) out; narrow nasty streets out of repair, wretchedly thin of inhabitants, and above half of the common sort asking alms.  I cannot help fancying one under the figure of a clean Dutch citizen’s wife, and the other like a poor town lady of pleasure, painted and ribboned out in her head-dress, with tarnished silver-laced shoes, a ragged under-petticoat, a miserable mixture of vice and poverty.—­They have sumptuary laws in this town, which distinguish their rank by their dress, prevent the excess which ruins so many other cities, and has a more agreeable effect to the eye of a stranger, than our fashions.  I need not be ashamed to own, that I wish these laws were in force in other parts of the world.  When one considers impartially, the merit of a rich suit of clothes in most places, the respect and the smiles of favour it procures, not to speak of the envy and the sighs it occasions (which is very often the principal charm to the wearer), one is forced to confess, that there is need of an uncommon understanding to resift the temptation of pleasing friends and mortifying rivals; and that it is natural to young people to fall into a folly, which betrays them to that want of money which is the source of a thousand basenesses (sic).  What numbers of men have begun the world with generous inclinations, that have afterwards been the instruments of bringing misery on a whole people, being led by vain expence (sic) into debts that they could clear no other way but by the forfeit of their honour, and which they never could have contracted, if the respect the multitude pays to habits, was fixed by law, only to a particular colour or cut of plain cloth!  These reflections draw after them others that are too melancholy.  I will make haste to put them out of your head by the farce of relicks, with which I have been entertained in all Romish churches.