Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/88

60 are the schools and teachers. A youth who taught German to our children received 6d. an hour, and a music master 8d. There is a superfluity of music masters here. Music begins to be taught with the A B C. and music accompanies the natives daily in their walks. The Dresdeners are never tired of it."

Sexual morality stood at low ebb in Austria and Southern Germany, in Bavaria, Baden and Wurtemberg, as well as in Hungary. Saxony was equally bad in this respect. This was due to the impediments placed by Government upon marriage. The legislative impediments to marriage were intolerable. At the time when we were in Dresden no young person was permitted to marry who could not satisfy the burgomaster and the elders of the place that he or she was in good employment earning a living wage, and had also laid by sufficient money to furnish a house and to enable the pair to support a family when that should arrive. The very least sum each must possess would be, in the country, two hundred gulden, equivalent then to twenty pounds; and in a town double that amount. I quote the answer made by a Bürgermeister to a hale young man of two-and-twenty. "The request of Frederich Stark of Waldheim to be accepted as a householder in the commune of Bergdorf, on account of his proposed marriage with Margaret Flink of the same place, by decree of the Parochial Council of to-day is not acceded to, because it does not consider that he is in a pecuniary position entitling him to sustain a family. Herewith are returned the registers of birth. 20 March, 1866. The Bürgermeister Bos."

My father wrote in his diary: "Now let me say one word on the very apparent state of religion at Dresden. I cannot read men's hearts, and my acquaintance with the Germans is limited; but there are outward and visible signs which indicate the feelings of the inner man; thus, when I hear of twenty places of amusement open on Sundays, at which large bands are playing, and when, if any church at all be visited, it is the Court church, which is Catholic, and that for the music therein performed by the orchestra from the opera, I cannot think that religion has much place in the thoughts and feelings of the people. There is sufficient evidence to satisfy the most casual observer that religion with the mass of the people is a subject to which no attention whatever is directed. . . . Nor is morality any better. Want of truth is