Note 2 — LETTER I.

The North Germans are distinguished for energy, activity, acuteness, and high mental culture; the South Germans for easy good-nature, simplicity, contented animal enjoyment, and greater obsequiousness. In Vienna they call every gentleman Euer Gnaden, ‘Your Grace,’ and he is of course Gnadig, when he is kind or civil. But perhaps the author here alludes rather to a certain ceremonious stiffness of the burghers of Frankfurt, proud people who give their superiors their due, as they expect it of their inferiors.—(Reichsstadtisches Wesen). What is clear is, that he means that the inhabitants of the South are not so superior to antiquated distinctions as those of the North. The Prussians have been called the French of the North.—Trans.