manifest in all ranks. I have found on every side a total disregard for truth, and if you detect anyone in a falsehood, he or she will not show the smallest symptom of shame. I have been told that this is equally prevalent among the higher orders, but in that I have had no experience of judging.
"The police are a worthless institution. Having lost a greatcoat, stolen out of our ante-room, I learned that the thief had been seen wearing it openly in the streets, and remaining a resident in Dresden, unmolested. The only plan recommended to me for its recovery was to put a notice in the newspaper that I had lost such and such an article, describing it, and undertaking, if returned, that the name of the person bringing it would not be divulged, and a reward would be given. I understood that this was the plan usually adopted. At the very time when my coat was stolen, there were notices in the paper of two hundred and fifty other losses of a similar nature. A gentleman who in summer had left Dresden sent his servant to the town to fetch something, when the man, to his surprise, found the house-door open and the place occupied by burglars who were engaged in packing up his plate and furniture for removal. On the police being informed, they refused to act, because, said they, the rascals had been interrupted in their work, and it could not be proved that they had taken anything. A mistress who has detected her servant purloining food, etc., is required by the police when dismissing her to furnish her with a good character."
The morality of the domestic servants in Dresden, and presumedly elsewhere in Saxony, is notoriously bad. No mistress expects to find the girl she engages to be honest and virtuous. The written characters they produce are quite worthless, for should the employer give an adverse one, unless that servant had been convicted and imprisoned by a court of law, the employer would be liable to an action for defamation of character. The police in every way possible favour the domestics, so do the magistrates. They are surprised at a complaint being brought before them of pilfering. It is according to the order of nature that domestics should pick and steal, and be as indifferent to morality as the beasts; just as it is in the order of nature that they should have blue eyes and fair hair.
I do not recall that we attended the English chapel at Dresden;
