in des Plantes." Having gone thus far, I turned and retraced my
steps.

Every city has its fashionable quarter--new, expensive, handsome--of
which the citizens are proud, and through which the guide leads you with
much complacency. The streets are broad and regular, and cut one another
at right angles; there are sidewalks of granite, brick, or bitumen;
there are lamp-posts in every direction. The houses are like palaces;
their classically modern architecture, their irreproachable paint, their
varnished doors and well-scoured brasses, fill with joy the city fathers
and every lover of progress. The city is neat, orderly, salubrious, full
of light and air, and resembles Paris or London. There is the Exchange!
It is superb--as fine as the Bourse in Paris! I grant it; and, besides,
you can smoke there, which is a point of superiority.

Farther on you observe the Palace of Justice, the bank, etc., built in
the style you know well, adored by Philistines of every land. Doubtless
that house must have cost enormously; it contains all possible luxury
and comfort. You feel that the mollusk of such a shell can be nothing
less than a millionaire. Permit me, however, to love better the old
house with its overhanging stories, its roof of irregular tiles, and
all its little characteristic details, telling of former generations. To
be interesting, a city must have the air of having lived, and, in a
sense, of having received from man a soul. What makes these magnificent
streets built yesterday so cold and so tiresome, is that they are not
yet impregnated with human vitality.

Leaving the new quarter, I penetrated by degrees into the chaos of the
old streets, and soon I had before my eyes a characteristic, picturesque
Hamburg; a genuine old city with a medieval stamp which would delight
Bonington, Isabey or William Wyld. I walked slowly, stopping at every
street-corner that I might lose no detail of the picture; and rarely has
any promenade amused me so well.

Houses, whose gables are denticulated or else curved in volutes, throw
out successive overhanging stories, each composed of a row of windows,
or, more properly, of one window divided into sections by carved
uprights. Beneath each house are excavated cellars, subterranean
recesses, which the steps leading to the front door bestride like a
drawbridge. Wood, brick, stone and slate, mingled in a way to content
the eye of a colorist, cover what little space the windows leave on the
ou