at home, careless of what passes
there; and suffer disorder and confusion to prevail, without feeling the
least uneasiness. Great frequenters of churches, their piety consists in
the strictest conformity to all the externals of religion. They profess
the most boundless belief in all the silly legends with which their
treatises of devotion are filled; and these are the only books they ever
read. The coldness of their constitution occasions a species of
regulated gallantry, which is rather the effect of an opinion that it
is an appendage of high life, than the result of their natural
inclination.

It must, at the same time be allowed, that the Austrian women are
endowed with a great fund of sincerity and candor; and, though too much
on the reserve, and prone to keep at an unnecessary distance, are yet
capable of the truest attachment, and always warm and zealous in the
cause of those whom they have admitted to their friendship.

Though the Germans are rather a dull and phlegmatic people, and not
greatly enslaved by the warmer passions, yet at the court of Vienna they
are much given to intrigue: and an amour is so far from being
scandalous, that a woman gains credit by the rank of her gallant, and is
reckoned silly and unfashionable if she scrupulously adheres to the
virtue of chastity. But such customs are more the customs of courts,
than of places less exposed to temptation, and consequently less
dissolute; and we are well assured that in Germany there are many women
who do honor to humanity, not by chastity only, but also by a variety of
other virtues.

The ladies at the principal courts, differ not much in their dress from
the French and English. They are not, however, so excessively fond of
paint as the former. At some courts, they appear in rich furs: and all
of them are loaded with jewels, if they can obtain them. The female part
of the burgher's families, in many of the German towns, dress in a very
different manner, and some of them inconceivably fantastic, as may be
seen in many prints published in books of travels. But, in this respect,
they are gradually reforming, and many of them make quite a different
appearance in their dress from what they did thirty or forty years ago.

The inhabitants of Vienna lived luxuriously, a great part of their time
being spent in feasting and carousing. In winter, when the different
branches of the Danube are frozen over, and the ground covered with
snow, the ladies take the