and the philosophic enlightenment of this
period, had reformed most of the Protestant courts, as also Electoral
Saxony, since the Seven Years' War. Greater economy, household order,
and earnest solicitude for the good of the subject became visible. Many
governments were models of good administration, like Weimar and Gotha,
and in the family of one of the great ladies of the eighteenth century,
the Duchess Caroline of Hesse, as well as in Darmstadt and Baden, there
was economical mild rule. Even indeed in the court of Duke Karl of
Wurtemburg there was improvement. He who had dug lakes on the hills,
and employed his serfs to fill them with water, who had lighted the
woods with Bengal lights, and caused half-naked Fauns and Satyrs to
dance there, had learnt a lesson since 1778, and on his fiftieth
birthday, had promised his people to become economical, and had since
that been transformed into a careful landlord, under whom the country
flourished. Even the ecclesiastical courts had experienced somewhat of
this philosophical tendency, though undoubtedly the activity of an
enlightened ruler of Wuerzburg or Munster was much limited by the
inevitable supremacy of an ecclesiastical aristocracy, and the
increasing priestly rule.

But the Imperial cities of the south were, with the exception of
Frankfort, in a state of decadence; they were deeply in debt, and a
rotten patrician rule prevented modern industry from flourishing. The
councils still continued to issue high-sounding decrees, but the
_Senatus populusque, Bopfingensis_, or _Nordlingensis_ as they called
themselves in heroic style, appeared only a caricature to their
neighbours. The renowned Ulm, the southern capital of Suabia, once the
mistress of Italian agency business, had sunk so low that it was
supposed that she must sell her domain to preserve herself from
bankruptcy; Augsburg also was only the shadow of its former greatness,
its princely merchants had become weak commission agents and small
money-changers: it was said that the city only contained six firms that
could raise more than 200,000 gulden. The Academy of Arts of the city
was nothing but a school for artisans. The famous engravers made bad
pictures of saints for the village trade; the old hatred of confessions
still raged among the inhabitants, for its famed Senate was divided
into two factions, and nowhere did the parties of Frederic and Maria
Theresa contend so bitterly. Even Nuremberg, once the flower an