o meals. The
practice of boarding the workmen is universal in Hamburg, and we
therefore fared at the table of our "principal," and were amply and well
provided for. During the first week of my stay in Hamburg, I lodged at
an humble English hotel, where I paid at the rate of ten marks a week for
bed and board, a sum equal to eleven shillings and eightpence.
Reasonable as this may appear, it was beyond my resources, and would
indeed have been a positive extravagance under the circumstances.
Moreover, the arrangements of the workshop forbade it. My next lodging
was at a German hotel, where I slept in a little cupboard which hung over
a black, sluggish canal, and was without stove or fire-place. The cost
of this chamber was five marks a month, or scarcely one shilling and
sixpence a week. These expenses will appear paltry and insignificant,
till compared with the amount of wages received, when it will be apparent
that boarding and lodging in an English hotel at eleven shillings and odd
pence a week, was a monstrous extravagance; and that even an apartment in
a German gasthaus, at five marks a month, was more than the slender
pittance received would reasonably bear. Alcibiade, who, besides being
an expert workman, was an excellent modeller and draughtsman, received
seven marks a week, with board and lodging, or eight shillings weekly in
positive cash. Peterkin the Dane, who was yet a novice, was in the
receipt of four marks a week, and paid for his own lodging--weekly pay,
four shillings and eightpence. My own wages were seven marks a week and
board, while I paid for my own lodging; and when, upon the departure of
Alcibiade for Berlin, I took possession of his bedroom--a mere box
without a window--a deduction of one mark was made as an equivalent. I
thus received in wages six marks; lodging may be reckoned at one, and
board at five marks a week--total, twelve marks; which will yield in
English money the magnificent sum of fourteen shillings.

In order to contrast these figures more fully with the pay of our English
artisans, it will be necessary to mention some further expenses to which
the workman in England is not liable, or in which the commercial
pre-eminence of his country gives him a marked advantage. With respect
to the former, as the employer in many cases furnishes only the ruder and
less portable machinery of the workshop, the workman has, to a certain
extent, to provide his own tools; and in regard to the