第59章 LETTER XXIII(1)

I might have spared myself the disagreeable feelings I experienced the first night of my arrival at Hamburg,leaving the open air to be shut up in noise and dirt,had I gone immediately to Altona,where a lodging had been prepared for me by a gentleman from whom I received many civilities during my journey.I wished to have travelled in company with him from Copenhagen,because I found him intelligent and friendly,but business obliged him to hurry forward,and I wrote to him on the subject of accommodations as soon as I was informed of the difficulties I might have to encounter to house myself and brat.

It is but a short and pleasant walk from Hamburg to Altona,under the shade of several rows of trees,and this walk is the more agreeable after quitting the rough pavement of either place.

Hamburg is an ill,close-built town,swarming with inhabitants,and,from what I could learn,like all the other free towns,governed in a manner which bears hard on the poor,whilst narrowing the minds of the rich;the character of the man is lost in the Hamburger.Always afraid of the encroachments of their Danish neighbours,that is,anxiously apprehensive of their sharing the golden harvest of commerce with them,or taking a little of the trade off their hands--though they have more than they know what to do with--they are ever on the watch,till their very eyes lose all expression,excepting the prying glance of suspicion.

The gates of Hamburg are shut at seven in the winter and nine in the summer,lest some strangers,who come to traffic in Hamburg,should prefer living,and consequently--so exactly do they calculate--spend their money out of the walls of the Hamburger's world.Immense fortunes have been acquired by the per-cents.arising from commissions nominally only two and a half,but mounted to eight or ten at least by the secret manoeuvres of trade,not to include the advantage of purchasing goods wholesale in common with contractors,and that of having so much money left in their hands,not to play with,I can assure you.Mushroom fortunes have started up during the war;the men,indeed,seem of the species of the fungus,and the insolent vulgarity which a sudden influx of wealth usually produces in common minds is here very conspicuous,which contrasts with the distresses of many of the emigrants,"fallen,fallen from their high estate,"such are the ups and downs of fortune's wheel.Many emigrants have met,with fortitude,such a total change of circumstances as scarcely can be paralleled,retiring from a palace to an obscure lodging with dignity;but the greater number glide about,the ghosts of greatness,with the Croix de St.Louis ostentatiously displayed,determined to hope,"though heaven and earth their wishes crossed."Still good breeding points out the gentleman,and sentiments of honour and delicacy appear the offspring of greatness of soul when compared with the grovelling views of the sordid accumulators of cent.per cent.

Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed:so much so,inferring from what I have lately seen,that Imean not to be severe when I add--previously asking why priests are in general cunning and statesmen false?--that men entirely devoted to commerce never acquire or lose all taste and greatness of mind.