So much upon the _dramatis personæ_, other than the principal figure and his family. Let an attempt follow to describe the little city as it appeared in 1770--in other words, to picture the scene. By an enumeration made in 1789, the population of Bonn was 9,560 souls, a number which probably for a long series of years had rarely varied beyond a few score, more or less--one, therefore, that must very nearly represent the aggregate in 1770. For the town had neither manufactures nor commerce beyond what its own wants supported; it was simply the residence of the Elector--the seat of the court, and the people depended more or less directly upon that court for subsistence--as a wag expressed it, “all Bonn was fed from the Elector’s kitchen.” The old city walls--(the “gar gute Fortification, dass der Churfürst sicher genug darinnen Hof halten kann” of Johann Hübner’s description)--were already partially destroyed. Within them the whole population seems to have lived. Outside the city gates it does not appear that, save by a chapel or two, the eye was impeded in its sweep across gardens and open fields to the surrounding villages which, then as now hidden in clusters of walnut and fruit trees, appeared, when looked upon from the neighboring hills, like islands rising upon the level surface of the plain. The great increase of wealth and population during the last 150 years in all this part of the Rhine valley under the influence of the wise national economy of the Prussian government, has produced corresponding changes in and about the towns and villages; but the grand features of the landscape are unchanged; the ruins upon the Drachenfels and Godesberg looked down, as now, upon the distant roofs and spires of Bonn; the castle of Siegburg rose above the plains away to the East; the chapel crowned the Petersberg, the church with the marble stairs the nearer Kreuzberg. A PROSPECT OF BONN IN BEETHOVEN’S DAY