CHAPTER XX.DUSSELDORF DESCRIBED ... ITS INHABITANTS ... THE GRAND DUCAL COURT ... ANECDOTE OF MURAT ... A DOUBLE ENTENDRE ... THE FLYING BRIDGE ... COLOGNE ... A CONTRABAND PEEP ... THE CATHEDRAL ... A COLLECTION OF GODS ... A BON MOT ... PRIESTLY MUMMERY ... ANECDOTE OF AN ARCHBISHOP OF COLOGNE ... ANECDOTE OF REUBENS AND OTHER DISTINGUISHED PERSONS ... PRESENT STATE OF COLOGNE.

Dusseldorf, so called from the little river Dussel that waters its southern side, and Dhorpf which means village, is now the capital of the imperial dutchy of Berg, under the new dynasty of the Bonaparte family: it formerly belonged to the German empire, and afterwards to the elector Palatine, who at one period made it his residence; this city owed the prosperity which it long enjoyed, to the sagacity and liberality of the elector Joseph William, who enlarged it in 1709, by nobly offering its freedom, and an exemption from all taxes for thirty years, to every one who would build a house within its walls, and took every judicious advantage of its local adaptation to trade, and established universal toleration in religion; the benefit of measures so worthy of the Christian and the ruler was speedily felt, and Dusseldorf, from a petty village, soon became a flourishing city, and contained a population of 18,000 inhabitants.

Few towns have suffered more from the calamities of war than this: its streets, squares, and houses, denote its former consequence; it now resembles a mausoleum half in ruins. Early in the year 1795, the army of the Sambre and the Meuse suddenly crossed the Rhine, and summoned the city to surrender, which it refused to do; in consequence of which the French bombarded it, and set fire to one of its most beautiful churches, which was burnt to the ground; and the city palace, which contained many noble apartments,very nearly experienced the same fate; naked walls blackened with smoke, are all that remain of this splendid pile, except that part of it which contained the celebrated gallery of paintings, which were removed to Munich under a Prussian escort. The French at length took the city by assault, the Austrians who were garrisoned within it having previously retired. I was surprised to find that the French had spared the statue erected as a mark of public gratitude, in the centre of the court of the gallery, to the honour of the elector John William, who was its founder. He commenced it in the year 1710; but dying in 1716, the completion of this princely and public-spirited design was totally neglected by his successor Charles Phillip, who employed part of his treasure, and the whole of his taste, in improving the city of Manheim. Charles Theodore, his successor, finished this institution, established an academy of drawing and painting in Dusseldorf, and also erected a public gallery of paintings at Manheim, which were open to every one, and every artist had permission to study and copy them.

The ruins of the palace have a melancholy appearance from the water, on which I made a sketch of the city, when I saw for the first time one of the Rhenish flying bridges, the description of which I shall reserve for a few pages following, as I did not go on board of it. That famous gallery, which attracted men of taste from distant parts of Europe, occupied that part of the palace which stood close to the junction of the Rhine and the Dussel, and was divided into five very large and spacious apartments, one of which was wholly devoted to one picture of Gerard Douw, esteemed inestimable, and one of the finest he ever painted; the subject of it is uncommonly complicated, yet every figure in it is so exquisitely finished, that it will bear the closest inspection. Descriptions of paintings are seldom very interesting; but the subject of this renowned picture deserves to be recorded. It represented a quack-doctor at a fair, upon his stage covered with a Turkey carpet, set out with vials and gallipots, a shaving bason, an umbrella, and a monkey: the doctor, in the most whimsical dress, is haranguing with uncommon humour and cunning in his countenance,the motley crowd below; amongst whom, a gardener wheeling a barrow filled with vegetables, a countryman with a hare hanging over his shoulders, a woman with a child at the breast, baking little cakes for the fair; another woman listening with ardent credulity, whilst a sharper is picking her pocket, are penciled in a wonderful manner. Douw has represented himself looking out of the window of a public house, and drawing the several objects. The second chamber contained the productions of the Italian school; a third those of the Flemish: a fourth was dedicated to Vanderwerff; and the fifth to Rubens.

The only part of the city which presented any appearance of animation was the market-place, which abounded with fine vegetables, and exquisite fruit. The market-women, and the female peasants, wear a large handkerchief depending from the top of the head, which has a picturesque effect. Fruit is so abundant that for the value of 3d.I purchased a pound and a half of the most luscious grapes. In this square, part of the scaffolding used for illuminating the hotel de ville, on the grand duke making his first entry into the city, remained. About a mile from the town is a country palace of the prince, separated from a garden, in front of it, by the great road to Cologne. The palace is large, and very elegantly furnished; the gardens are spacious, well kept, and open to well-dressed persons. The view of the city from these walks is very beautiful. The ramparts, which are levelling as fast as the pickaxe and spade can lay them low, in many places present a very agreeable walk.

All religions are tolerated, but that most followed is Roman Catholic, for the celebration of which there are three large churches; before one of them, raised and railed off, is a group as large as life, in wood, painted white, representing our Saviour crucified between the two thieves, and Mary Magdalen, kneeling; several persons were praying very devoutly before those images. The dead are wisely buried out of the city. In one of the streets at the extremity of the town, is a prodigious pile of buildings for barracks. The soldiers of the grand duke, principally Germans, and a few French, had a very military appearance. The manufactures are ata pause; the population is reduced to about eight thousand persons, the greater portion of whom are in very abject circumstances. How different must this place be to its former period of prosperity, before the last war, when a gay old Prussian officer who resided there, told me, that it was enlivened with clubs, casinos, and balls, when every family of common respectability could regale its friends with the choicest Johannis-Berg Hockein-Rheideshein wine. The princes of Germany differ very much from those of our own country, in the plain and unostentatious manner in which they move about. One morning, when I was crossing the court of my inn to go to breakfast, I saw a little boy fencing with a stick with one of the ostlers: as I was pleased with his appearance, I asked him if he was the son of the maitre d’hotel, to which he replied, “No sir, I am the hereditary prince Von Salm.” The prince and princess, his father and aunt, were at the same hotel, having come to Dusseldorf to pay their respects to Prince Murat. The grand ducal court was, as I was informed, kept up with considerable splendor, in the circle of which the grand dutchess, one of the sisters of Napoleon, had not yet made her appearance. It was generally believed, notwithstanding the use my worthy host made of her approaching entry, that no great attachment existed between the grand ducal pair; and that the gaiety of the imperial court of Paris possessed more prevailing attractions to the grand Dutchess than her own. Murat, grand Duke of Berg, is an instance of the astonishing results of great ability and good fortune. His origin was so very obscure, that very little of it is known. The following anecdote will, however, throw some light upon the extreme humility of his early condition in life. After his elevation to the rank of a prince of the French empire, he halted, in the close of the last war, at a small town in Germany, where he stayed for two or three days; and on finding the bread prepared for his table of an inferior kind, he despatched one of his suite to order the best baker in the town to attend him, to receive from him his directions respecting this precious article of life. A baker who had been long established in the place was selected for this purpose; and upon the aide-de-camp ordering him to wait upon theprince immediately, he observed, to the no little surprise of the officer—“It is useless my going, the prince will never employ me.” Upon being pressed to state his reasons, he declined assigning any; but as the order of the messenger was peremptory, he followed him, and was immediately admitted to Murat, with whom he stayed about ten minutes, and then retired. As he quitted the house in which the prince lodged, he observed to the aide-de-camp, “I told you the prince would not employ me—he has dismissed me with this,” displaying a purse of ducats. Upon being again pressed to explain the reason of this singular conduct, he replied, “The Prince Murat, when a boy, was apprenticed to a biscuit baker in the south of France, at the time I was a journeyman to him, and I have often threshed him for being idle; the moment he saw me just now, he instantly remembered me, and without entering into the subject of our ancient acquaintance, or of that which led me to his presence, he hastily took his purse of ducats from the drawer of the table where he sat, gave it to me, and ordered me to retire.”

The heroic courage which Murat displayed in the campaign of 1797, when in conjunction with Duphoz, at the head of their respective divisions, they plunged into the deep and impetuous stream of Tagliamento, gained the opposite banks, and drove the Austrians, headed by their able and amiable general, the Archduke Charles, as far as the confines of Carnithia and Carniola; and the numerous battles in which he distinguished himself in Egypt, and afterwards at Montebello and Marengo, where at the head of his cavalry, he successfully supported the brilliant and eventful movement of Dessaix, will rank him in the page of history amongst the most illustrious of those consummate generals, which the fermentation of the French revolution has elevated from the depths of obscurity. In Egypt he was high in the confidence of Napoleon, whom he accompanied with Lasnes, Andreossi, Bessieres, and several members of the Egyptian Institute, when Bonaparte effected his memorable passage from his army to Frejus, in August 1799. Upon the death of General Le Clerc, who was united to a sister of Napoleon, Murat paid his addresses to, and espoused hiswidow,[3]with the entire approbation of his great comrade in arms, by whom he was, upon his elevation to the imperial throne, created a prince of the empire, and at length raised to the rank of a sovereign. He is reserved and unostentatious, and is seldom visible to his people. Some of the Westphalians, who are attached to the ancient order of things, have a joke amongst themselves at the expense of their new prince, whose christian name beingJoachim, they pronounce it with an accompanying laugh,Jachim, which means “drive him away;” and there is very little difference in the pronunciation.

3. This is a mistake of the author. Prince Murat married Napoleon’s youngest sister, who had not been previously married. Le Clerc’s widow is married to Prince Borghese.Amer. Editor.

3. This is a mistake of the author. Prince Murat married Napoleon’s youngest sister, who had not been previously married. Le Clerc’s widow is married to Prince Borghese.

Amer. Editor.

As Dusseldorf had infinitely less charms for me than it had for the grand Dutchess, I was as well pleased to quit it, as she was disinclined to enter it; so mounting my cabriolet, for which I was obliged to make the best bargain I could with the post-master, I set off for Cologne, the road to which is far more pleasant than any other part of the dutchy which I saw, though the whole is very flat. About six miles from Dusseldorf, I passed a beautiful country palace of the grand Duke, called Benrad, composed of a range of semicircular buildings detached from each other, standing upon the summit of a gentle slope, at the bottom of which is a large circular piece of water. The grand Duke makes this place his principal residence, and very seldom goes to that in the neighbourhood of the city more than twice in the week, to give audience and transact affairs of state, which, as the government is entirely despotic, are managed with ease and despatch. The appearance of the body-guard at the entrance announced that the prince was at this place when I passed it: the grounds and gardens, seen from the road, appear to be tastefully arranged. Although the road is sandy, yet it is infinitely preferable, I was informed, to crossing the ferry at Dusseldorf, and proceeding by that route to Cologne. After passing Muhlheim, a very neat town, the suburbs of which are adorned with some handsome country-houses, I entered, about a mile further, the village of Deutz, and beheld the venerable cityof Cologne, separated by the Rhine, immediately before me. At one end of the village is a large convent of Carmelites, and on the day of my arrival a religious fête was celebrating, at which nearly all the population of the place and neighbourhood assisted, and the streets were enlivened with little booths, in which crosses and ornaments of gold lace and beads were tastefully exposed to the eye.

The bell of the flying bridge summoned me on board, and in about five minutes I found myself in the French empire, attended by French custom-house officers in green costume, who conducted me to the Douane. This ferry cannot fail to impress the mind and excite the curiosity of a stranger: it is formed of a broad platform resting upon two large barges, like our coal lighters; from this platform a vast wooden frame in the shape of a gallows is erected, which is fastened to the former by strong chains of iron, whilst from the centre cross piece, a chain of the same metal of great length, is fixed to the top of an upright pole standing in each of a long line of boats, the remotest of which is at anchor; by this machinery a powerful pressure is obtained; to each of the barges a rudder is affixed, which, upon being placed in an oblique direction, produces a lateral motion upon the stream, which acts as a force from above; so that by changing the rudder to the right or left, the bridge is forced on one side or the other of the river, with equal certainty and celerity. Fifteen hundred persons can with perfect ease be transported at the same time upon these bridges, and carriages and horses are driven upon them without any stoppage, from the banks, to which they are lashed, until put in motion. The Germans call this machine the Fliegende Schiffs-Brücke, or the volant bridge of boats; the Dutch geer burg, or the bridge in shackles, in allusion to its chains; and the French le pont volant, or the flying bridge.

The search made by the custom-house officers amongst my fellow-passengers, most of whom had only just crossed and recrossed the river, was very rigorous; the females were marched up to a small house, where, as I discovered by accidentally opening the door, and offending as the elders did when they took a lawless peep at Susanna, to the no small delight of those who were loungingwithout, and of embarrassment to those within, they underwent a private examination by two matrons, appointed for the purpose.

At this place I expected some difficulty; but upon my declaring myself an American, and showing my pass, and just opening my trunk, the officers, with great politeness, called a porter to carry my luggage into the city, and pulling off their hats, recommended me to La Cour Imperiale, one of the best hotels, where I arrived just in time to sit down to a splendid table d’hôte, at which several beautiful and well-dressed ladies, German noblemen, and French officers, were present.

This city was formerly celebrated for the number of its devotees and prostitutes, which the French police has very much reduced. The first object I visited, was the cathedral, which, from the water appears like a stupendous fragment, that had withstood the shock of war, or some convulsion of nature, by which the rest of the pile had been prostrated; but upon inquiry, I found that it owed its mutilated appearance to no such event, but to the obstacles which have occurred for ages in completing it, according to its original design. In the year 1248, Conrad, the elector and bishop of Hocksteden, in the pride and exultation of holy enthusiasm, resolved to erect a temple to God, which should have no equal in size and magnificence; it was intended that the two western towers should have been five hundred feet in elevation, and the nave or body of the church in proportion, and every external stone which the eye could perceive, decorated with the most exquisite ornament of pure gothic architecture. The successors of the prince bishop, who resembled in the splendor of his spirit the emperor who so elegantly wished to leave the townstone, which he had foundbrick, continued the building for two centuries and a half; but owing to their resources being insufficient, they were obliged to leave it in a very imperfect state, but capable of being used for religious purposes. There is no building of the kind to compare with it, but the Duomo at Milan. One of the western towers, which I ascended, is about two hundred and fifty feet high, from which there is a fine view of the city, the Rhine, and the surrounding country; the other tower is not above forty feet high. The roofof the greater part of the body of the church is temporary and low; but so spacious is the area which it covers, that one hundred massy pillars, arranged in four rows, present a light and airy appearance upon it. My guide, who was a good humoured intelligent man, with many significant shrugs of regret, informed me, that the moveable decorations of the church and altar were once worthy of a stranger’s attention; but that the generals of the French armies, during the revolution, had pillaged this holy sanctuary of its richest ornaments; however, the grand altar in the choir was not sufficiently portable for their rapacious hands, and remains to show the magnificent scale upon which every part of the cathedral was originally designed. This altar is formed of one solid block, of the finest sable marble, sixteen feet long and eight broad, placed upon the summit of a flight of steps.

The treasury, or as it is called the golden chamber, contains the robes of the priests, which are very magnificent, arranged with great care and order in several ward-robes; and busts of saints and holy utensils in gold and silver, many of which were once encrusted with the most precious stones, but which had been removed by the French, and their places supplied by paste. Amongst the still costly contents of this chamber, I noticed a small tomb of a priest in solid gold and silver, and a skull of St. Peter, of the same precious metal. In this room were several ladies, who appeared to be under the strongest influence of Roman Catholic enthusiasm; not a robe or a relic was exhibited, which did not draw forth some fervidly pious exclamation.

I was shewn, as a marvelous curiosity, the mausoleum of the Three Kings, behind the grand altar towards the east, where the bodies of these personages, and those of the martyrs, Gregory of Spoleto, and Felix Nabor, repose. The bones of the three kings are said to have been brought away by the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, when he sacked Milan, and presented to the archbishop Bernauld of Dassalde, who attended him in his military exploits, and who deposited them near Bonn, from whence they were transferred to the spot where their mausoleum was afterwards erected, before the building of the present cathedral in theyear 1170: the bones of these personages, of course, performed all sorts of prodigies; the blind by touching them, became astronomers, and the lame, dancing masters. This tomb, before the last war, was uncommonly rich and magnificent; but the French, who have displayed no great respect for living kings, could not be expected to pay much to three dead ones, and accordingly they have stripped their shrine of most of the jewelry, and precious ornaments. The sacrilege committed upon three holy kings, who were transported so far from their native country, reminds me of an anecdote, in which the playful wit of Mr. Hastings, formerly governor-general of India, was eminently displayed. An antiquary having collected in India a considerable number of Hindoo gods, had them well packed up for the purpose of being sent to England, and on the top of the case wrote in large characters “Gods—please to keep these uppermost;” the governor-general calling one morning on the collector, observed the package in his library, and remarking the superscription, said, “your direction is a wise one, for when you transport gods into a foreign country, it is ten to one but that they areoverturned.”

Every street reminds the stranger of the former prevalence of the priesthood. Before the war, the clergy in this city, were divided into eleven chapters, nineteen parishes, nineteen convents for men, and thirty-nine convents for women, besides forty-nine chapels, institutions which supported between two and three thousand persons in useless voluptuousness and sloth.

As the other churches have been stripped of their finery, and were not embellished by any striking work of the statuary, I merely took a cursory view of their exterior: the principal are the Jesuits’ church, the collegiate church of St. Gerion, that of the Maccabees, and the abbey church of St. Pantaleon: all these and a number of other sacred buildings useless to name, abounded with saints and shrines incrusted with a profusion of jewellery, and all the mummery and mockery of cunning and credulity. With respect to the chapel of St. Ursula, a whimsical circumstance occurred some years since: in this depositary, for a great length of time, have reposed the bones of the immaculate St. Ursula, andeleven thousand virgins her companions, who came from England in a little boat in the year 640, to convert the Huns who had taken possession of this city, who instead of being moved by their sweet eloquence and cherub-like looks, put an end to their argument by putting them all to death. Some doubts arose many years since whether any country could have spared so many virgins, and a surgeon, somewhat of a wag, upon examining the consecrated bones, declared that most of them were the bones of full grown female mastiffs, for which discovery he was expelled the city. The convents and monasteries are converted into garrisons for the French troops quartered in the city. It is in contemplation to pull down about two-thirds of the churches.

On account of its numerous religious houses Cologne was called the Holy city. Bigotry, beggary, and ignorance disfigured the place in spite of its once flourishing trade and university. When the French seized upon this city, in 1794, they soon removed the rubbish of ages; three-fourths of the priests had the choice of retiring or entering the army, and when withdrawn, the weak minds over which they had exercised sovereign influence recovered their tone, and lived to hail the hour of their delivery from fanatical bondage, and the sturdy beggars were formed into conscripts. One of the most illustrious of the archbishops of Cologne was Theodoric, who was much celebrated in his time for his talents, erudition and morals. An anecdote is related of him, that upon the emperor Sigismund one day asking him how to obtain happiness hereafter, as the possession of it seemed impossible, Theodoric replied, “You must act virtuously, that is, you should always pursue that plan of conduct which you promise to do whilst you are labouring under a fit of the gravel, gout, or stone.”

When the Devil was sickThe Devil a Monk would be;When the Devil was wellThe Devil a Monk was he.

When the Devil was sick

The Devil a Monk would be;

When the Devil was well

The Devil a Monk was he.

This city is celebrated for having given birth to Agrippina the mother of Nero, but it has derived more lustre from the immortal Rubens having been born here in 1640: the house in which heresided is still preserved and exhibited with great pride to strangers. This illustrious man was no less a scholar than a painter, and hence his allegorical works are more purely classical than those of any other master: of this the gallery of the Luxembourg and the banqueting-room at Whitehall bear ample testimony. Whilst he painted he used to recite the poems of Homer and Virgil, which he knew by heart, by which he infused the divine spirit of poetry into the productions of his pencil. After having studied a few years in Italy, his renown as an artist spread through Europe, whilst his learning, amenity of manners, elegant accomplishments, and amiable mind, secured to him the esteem and regard of all whom he approached. He was particularly cherished by the kings of England, Spain, and other monarchs: he was even employed upon a very delicate occasion to communicate proposals from the cabinet of Spain to that of London, and Charles I. was so delighted with his various talents, that he conferred upon him the honour of knighthood. The number of his paintings is prodigious. Sir Joshua Reynolds said that the most grand, as well as the most perfect piece of composition in the world, was that of Rubens’s picture of the Fall of the Damned, formerly in the gallery of Dusseldorf; that it combined such a varied, heterogeneous and horrible subject, in such a wonderful manner, that he scarcely knew which most to admire, the invention or the composition of the master. The last of Rubens’s paintings was the Crucifixion of St. Peter, with his head downward, which he presented to St. Peter’s church in this city one day after taking a copy of the register of his birth from its archives: the tasteless and mercenary heads of the church received this invaluable present with little expressions of gratitude, and were disappointed that the donor had not given them money in lieu: when Rubens heard of their dissatisfaction, he offered them 28,000 crowns for the picture, which, merely in consequence of the offer, they considered to be worth infinitely more, and therefore refused to sell him the work of his own hands, and it was preserved with great veneration in the church, where it continued till Cologne became one of the cities of the French empire. Rubens, to the powers and graces before ascribed to him, united the virtueof a christian: from motives of piety and benevolence he adorned many churches and convents with his matchless productions; which, as if the hallowed purpose to which they were devoted had inspired him, whilst he painted, were generally the most masterly efforts of his pencil.

Thomas à Kempis, so celebrated for his extraordinary piety, was born in the neighbourhood of this city in 1380. The last edition of his works is that of Cologne 1660, 3 vols. folio; his most celebrated work was entitled ‘De Imitatione Christi;’ which, on account of its great piety and merit, has been translated into almost every living language. This work has been attempted to be ascribed to an abbot of the name of Gerson, of the order of St. Benedict, which for many years produced severe controversies between the canons of St. Augustine, to which Thomas à Kempis belonged, and the Benedictines.

The celebrated William Caxton opened his printing office here in 1471, and printed the work of Le Fevre, which was three years afterwards published in London, where he had the honour of being the first to introduce the invaluable art of printing. Adam Schule the mathematician, who died at Pekin, was a calendar here. Vondel the Dutch Virgil was born here, as was the wonderful Maria Schurman, who was well versed in twelve languages, and wrote five classically, besides excelling in every accomplishment then known. Excess of genius and learning made her melancholy mad, and she died from an inordinate debauch in eating spiders.

The Town House is a very ancient edifice, and contains the only specimen of Grecian architecture in the city. There were three ecclesiastical electorates in Germany, viz. Cologne, Mayence, and Treves, which have been abolished by Napoleon. The revenues of the elector of Cologne amounted to upwards of two hundred thousand pounds. Cologne must have been declining for some centuries, for in the year 1200 it was capable of furnishing thirty thousand men for the field, a number which its present population is said not to exceed. The whole of the trade of this town was extensive before the last war, and at one period, in spiteof its bigotted rulers, it was one of the richest and most flourishing cities in Germany: its traders carry outward annually large quantities of salted provisions from Westphalia, iron from the forges of Nassau, wood from the Upper Rhine and the Neckar, wine, hemp, tobacco, brass, tufo stone, tobacco-pipe clay, millet, gins, dried fruits, potash, copper, ribbands, stockings, and lace: and they purchase of the Dutch paper, oil, cottons, groceries, spices, medicinal drugs, also for dyeing, and English lead and tin.

The policy of the French government since it has assumed a settled form, has very much directed its attention to the depressed state of the manufactures of Cologne, which formerly employed eleven thousand children, and under its auspices there are several fabrics in a very flourishing condition, particularly those for manufacturing stuffs and ribbands, and a great deal of iron is now wrought in this city. The university is at a very low ebb, in consequence of so many young men having embraced the profession of arms. This university was once very celebrated, and was the most ancient in Germany, having been founded in 1380. Pope Urban the Sixth paid it the following compliment, in allusion to its having given birth to the college of Louvain:

Matre pulchra filia pulchrior.

This maternal university was divided into theology, law, medicine, and philosophy; but has not the only celebrity of having sent into the world many enlightened men.

In the department of Cologne the vineyards began first to appear. The vines in the garden grounds of the city are said to have yielded seven hundred and fourteen thousand gallons of wine. The wines are not attempted to be cultivated higher north.

During my stay at Cologne I visited the French parades every morning and evening. As the parades in France used to be confined to the morning, it was natural to conjecture that some new and great political storm was collecting, for which the French emperor was preparing by redoubled activity and energy. At these parades the conscripts, after having undergone a brief drilling, were incorporated with the veteran troops: to wheel, to formclose column, to load, fire, and charge with the bayonet, seemed to be all the motions which were attended to. Instead of forming the line, as with us, with exquisite nicety, but little attention was paid to it, for a more slovenly one I never witnessed; but by thus simplifying the manœuvres, and confining the attention of the soldier only to the useful part of his duty, a conscript is qualified to march to the field of battle with the rest of the troops in five days. But little attention was paid to the dress of the men, who wore uniform only in a short blue coat with white or red facings, and appeared to be left at full liberty to consult their own taste or finances in every other article, for some wore breeches, some pantaloons, some appeared with gaiters, some without, some had shoes, and others half-boots.

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