amask was very beautifully prepared, with
artistic patterns which we still admire; to possess such damask
table-covers was a most particular pleasure, and great value was also
set upon fine body-linen; the ruffled shirt which Gellert received as a
present from Lucius was not forgotten in the description of his
audience.

The dress worn in public was still regarded by serious men as a matter
of station; the Pietists had accustomed the citizen to wear dark or
sober colours; but fine textures, buttons, unpretending embroidery and
linen, demonstrated not less than perukes and swords the high-bred
man. This was the dress to be worn in public, and must especially be
put on when going out; and as it was inconvenient and--at least the
perukes--difficult to put on and to powder without the help of others,
a contrast wan produced by this between home and society which
proscribed social intercourse at certain hours in the day, and made it
formal and elaborate. At home a dressing-gown was worn, in which
literary men received visits, and the "best" dress was carefully
spared. Many things which appear to us as common necessaries were still
quite unknown, and the absence of many comforts was not felt. In the
year 1745 an Austrian non-commissioned officer begged of an imprisoned
officer, from whom he had taken a watch, to wind it up for him; he had
never had one in his hands. The worthy Semler had become a professor
before he obtained by the aid of a bookseller his first silver watch;
and he complained, about 1780, that then every master of arts, nay,
every student thought he must have a watch; now, in every family of
similar station, the third-form boy has a silver, and the student a
gold watch.

Besides the landed nobility, only the highest state officials and the
richest merchants kept their own carriage and horses, and this more
rarely than fifty years before. But literary men were then often
advised by physicians not to fear the dangers of riding; schools were
established, and riding-horses let out for hire. It did not indeed
happen to every one as to the invalid Gellert, to have as a present for
the second time, after the death of his renowned Dapple, a horse from
the Elector's stables, with velvet saddle and housings embroidered in
gold, which the dear professor, much moved after his manner, accepted,
though with the greatest distrust as to the good temper of the horse,
and was never weary of speaking of it to his acquaintanc