us number of
these court places was not advantageous to the manly character of the
noble. To be able to endure with smiles the humours and roughness of an
unbridled sovereign, to be complaisant as the pliant servant of the
despot's licentious desires, and of the mistresses' establishment, was
not the worst effect. He was in imminent danger of becoming so base
that the coarseness of the poor _Krippenreiter_ appeared comparatively
virtuous. It was a period when the noble mother gave her daughter with
pleasure into the arms of the profligate prince; and when the courtier
gave up his wife to him for money. And it was not only done by poor
nobles, but also by the offshoots of royal houses. The nobles in some
German provinces took the opportunity of practising similar
complaisance, even in our century, towards Napoleon's princes and
marshals. But the worst was that the great mass of the court nobility
drew also the families of landed proprietors, who were related to them,
to their residences. Sensible men were never weary of complaining that
the country nobles no longer dwelt on their properties to the great
damage of their coffers and morals; but thronged to the neighbourhood
of the princes to ruin themselves, their wives and daughters in the
pestilential atmosphere of the court. But these were fruitless warnings
in the greater part of Germany till the middle of the eighteenth
century.

Those who had more manly ambition filled civil or military offices.
There was a peculiar aspect, also, about these nobles that bore office.
If the son of an old family studied law, he easily gained by his family
connection the situation of councillor; and rose from thence, if clever
and well informed, to the highest offices, even to be _de facto_ a
ruler of states, or political agent and ambassador at foreign courts.
Besides divers rogues who were drawn forth in these bad times, there
were also some men of education, worth, and capacity, among the German
nobility of this class, who already in the time of Leibnitz formed the
real aristocracy of the order. It became gradually customary for nobles
to occupy the highest official positions and the posts of ambassadors,
after they had become an established court institution; also the
appointments of officers in the army. Whilst the Imperial armies, to
which the young nobles from the greater part of Germany were attracted,
retained, even after the reforms of Prince Eugene, somewhat of the
aspect of