show their sympathy for physical as well as moral deformity, the emperor and empress had two dwarfs as ugly as devils, especially the female, but loaded with diamonds, and privileged to stand at her majesty's elbow at all public places. All the other princes of Germany exhibited similar proofs of a taste for the ugly, which was so far improved by the King of Denmark that he made his dwarf his prime minister. "I can assign no reason," says Lady Montague, "for their fondness for these pieces of deformity, but the opinion all the absolute princes have that it is below them to converse with the rest of mankind; and not to be quite alone, they are forced to seek their companions among the refuse of human nature, these creatures being the only part of their court privileged to talk freely with them."
Though it was now the depth of winter, Mr. Wortley, who apparently was thoroughly tired of the stupid gayeties of Vienna, determined to escape from them, notwithstanding that all the fashionable world, Prince Eugene among the rest, endeavoured to divert him from his purpose by drawing the most frightful picture of Hungary, the country through which their road lay. The life led by Prince Eugene at the modern Sybaris seems to have inspired our traveller with a generous regret, the only one perhaps she ever felt for a stranger, and gave rise in her mind to that sort of mortification which reflections upon the imperfections of human nature are calculated to give birth to.
The ambassador commenced his journey on the 15th of January, 1717; and the snow lying deep upon the ground, their carriages were fixed upon traneaus, which moved over the slippery surface with astonishing rapidity. In two days they arrived at Raab, where the governor and the Bishop of Temeswar, an old man of a noble family, with a flowing white beard hanging down to his girdle, waited upon them with polite attentions and invitations, which their
