A person fond of music will be in a continual state of enjoyment at Dresden.  Besides the fine music in the Royal Chapel, the band of the King’s Guard is composed of first rate musicians, who attend regularly at Guard mounting and play for an hour together.  There is also a band of music every evening during the summer months that plays in the gardens of the Linkischer Bad.  Then there are various other places of recreation and amusement, at all of which musicians are in attendance; for a Saxon cannot enjoy his repast or his pipe without music and good music too to facilitate his digestion.  There is a custom in Dresden that on the occasion of the death of a person the young choristers of the Cathedral are sent for to sing hymns, standing in a semi-circle round the door of the house of the defunct.  These choristers are all dressed in black and their style of singing is melodious, solemn and impressive.

Smoking is so prevalent here and in all parts of Germany that if you wish to denote one of the male sex, smoker would be quite a synonymous word.  Such is the passion for this enjoyment that even at the balls the young men, the moment they have finished the waltz, quit the hands of their partners and rush into another room in order to smoke; nor would the beauty of Venus nor the wit of Minerva be powerful enough to restrain the young German from giving way to his darling practise.  Smoking tobacco has I think this visible effect, that it serves to calm all tumultuous passions, and what confirms me in this idea is, that most young Germans, in commencing life as adults, are full of enthusiastic and even exaggerated notions of liberty and equality.  They are romantic to a degree that is difficult to be conceived, and seem to be restrained by no selfish or worldly ideas.  This you would suppose would tend to render them rather turbulent subjects, under an autocratical government; but all this Schwaermerey evaporates literally in smoke:  they take to their pipe, and by degrees the fumes of tobacco cause all these lofty ideas to dissipate:  the pipe becomes more and more necessary to their existence, and consoles them for their wrongs real or imaginary; and in three or four years they sit down contentedly to their several occupations, as strait-forward, painstaking, plodding men, quite satisfied to follow the routine chalked out for them, and either totally forget all ambitious views, or become too indolent to make any sacrifice to obtain them, and this virtue comes from tobacco!!  The German Hippogriff becomes an Ox, dull and domestic, and treads out the corn placed before him, content to have his share thereof in peace and quietness.

The German Governments, which are mild and paternal, are fully aware of this and allow the utmost liberty of speech; well knowing that, thanks to that friend and ally of Legitimacy, tobacco, the romantic visionary and somewhat refractory youth will subside into a tranquil ganz alltaeglicher Mann and become totally averse to any innovation which demands the sacrifice of repose.