44 A COURT DANCE. mitted to appear without swords or trains, were assembled by five o'clock. The Orangery, a lofty spacious building, in a garden laid out in the stiff French taste, was decorated on the occasion with ranges of orange trees, laurel garlands, and festoons of flowers. When the company was assembled, the court arrived from the Summer-house, where they had dined; the Grand Duchess entering arm in arm with her illustrious sister from Weimar, surrounded by the ladies and gentlemen of their suites. The two Princesses then made the tour of the circle, in the ordinary style, and with the easy grace and affability peculiar to their character and manners. The two Grand Duchesses then seated themselves side by side on chairs prepared for them at the upper end of the hall, and tea, coffee, and substantial cakes were handed about in abundance. A favourite Waltz, struck up by a military band among the Orange trees, afforded a signal for dancing, to which German beaux are never remiss in attending. After the initiatory Polonaise-a promenade, rather than a dance, in which stately dowagers join, who have bid adieu to livelier exer A COURT DANCE. 45 tions-waltzing commenced. In an instant the gentlemen were at their posts, encircling their fair partners' forms, headed by the Duke of Anhalt Cöthen, an amiable young Sovereign of fifteen*, a grandson of the Grand Duchess of Hesse, who already shows proficiency in this first accomplishment of the German Prince and peasant. The ladies, all partaking this national passion, readily overlooked the inconvenience of a paved floor, and the boots and spurs of the officers in full uniform presented no impediment to their grace or agility. *Not long after my departure from Germany, I was grieved to hear of the death of this amiable Prince, in whose society and that of his excellent Governor, I had spent many agreeable moments. The young Duke had returned to his Principality, where he was received with enthusiasm by his subjects, who met him at the frontier and strewed his road with flowers. During his tedious illness woman's milk was recommended to him by the physicians-a number of females of his subjects instantly came to Cöthen to offer the nourishment of their own breasts to their young Sovereign. One was selected, but it was too late "The young disease that must subdue at length," "Grew with his growth, and strengthen'd with his strength." A decline carried off this promising young Prince before his sixteenth year. 46 A CHANOINESSE. A pretty girl, waltzing with great gaiety, was dressed in becoming black, with an orange-coloured cordon slung gracefully across her breast. It was a young Chanoinesse, in the costume of the Couvent des Dames Nobles at Frankfort, one of the very few of those useful establishments still existing. Protestant and Catholic noble ladies are here alike admitted; and enjoy, besides a yearly allowance of some hundred florins, board, lodging, and equipages, under the superintendance of a lady abbess. They are subject to none of the strict regulations of a religious order. They leave the convent when they please; sometimes are suffered to retain their pensions when married, sometimes to sell their situations. These institutions, which formerly abounded in Germany, have been, with few exceptions, pillaged of their funds, and abolished, in late years, to the great disadvantage of the impoverished nobility. In the intervals of the rotatory pleasures, which the parties engaged never allow to be very long, we were regaled with fruit-cakes, punch, lemonade, kalt schale, or wine soup, and sour milk. These two last drinkables A COURT DANCE. 47 are very common in summer, particularly on rural occasions. Kalt schale, or a cold bowl, is a pleasant composition of wine, lemon, currants, &c. served up in soup plates. Sour milk bears an honest name, and is neither more nor less than milk put into a jar in a cellar till it becomes sour and curdy; a curious process, similar to that which produces sour krout. This celebrated dish is nothing more than finely sliced cabbage, pressed down in jars, sprinkled with saltand kept till fermentation gives it that peculiar acidity so much admired in Germany. The evening at Bessungen was gay and agreeable, in spite of the wretchedness of the weather, and the coldness of the scene of action. There was less of ceremony than on the generality of Court entertainments. The Princesses, as usual, affable and conversable, were less intrenched within the barriers of etiquette than in the saloon of the Palace; and the opportunity which I thus acquired for a further acquaintance with the Grand Duchess of Weimar was my principal resource during the evening, my head not being at that time quite strong enough to enjoy the dizzy mazes of a German ball. 48 A COURT DANCE. Dancing was concluded by a cotillon, at the end of which the hour of nine gave the signal for the Court's departure to supper. The handsome Court.carriages appeared at the glass door of the Orangery, into one of which, more than ordinarily splendid, and drawn by a pair of prancing cream coloured horses, the two Grand Duchesses stepped, with a profusion of graceful bows, in return for the low obeisances of the assembly crowding round them. The little Princes, and their cousin the young Duke, with the ladies and officers of the Court, followed in the substantial coaches, with long tailed black horses, and the rest of the company filed off as their carriages drove up, with less delay and damage than sometimes occur at a rout in Grosvenor Square. A few days after, I was present, or-as a Frenchman would say, if he sat in the gallery of the Chamber of Deputies to listen to the speeches—I assisted—at another rural entertainment, given by a pretty and amiable Lady of Honour of the Grand Duchess of Hesse, in the Bosquet, or public English Garden, one of the principal orna |