t burn powder; and there
was enough of military ardour among them to carry them through the
fatigue of the day. It required a great deal; for, like other military
bodies of a late day, the commissariat department totally broke down, and
citizens were kept hungering and thirsting upon the blank, dusty plain,
within half-a-mile of stored-up abundance. The confirmation of the
apprentices and the conscription of the young men was a more serious
matter. It took place in the great square, where a stage and pavilion
were erected; all the authority of the senate, and the services of the
church were united to render it solemn and impressive. It was a source
of deep interest to many of my own acquaintances, more especially to the
young cooper who worked underground at our house, and who, just released
from his apprenticeship, had the good or ill fortune to be drawn for the
next year's levy.

There was one institution, not precisely of Hamburg, but at the very
doors of it, which exercised considerable influence upon its habits and
morals, and that of no beneficial kind. This was the Danish State
Lottery, the office of which was at Altona, where the prizes were
periodically drawn upon Sunday. The Hamburgers were supposed to receive
certain pecuniary advantages from this lottery in the shape of benefits
bestowed upon the Waisenkinder of the town, who, like our own blue-coat
boys of the old time, were the drawers of the numbers; but the advantages
were very questionable, seeing that the bulk of speculators were the
Hamburgers themselves, and the great prizes of the undertaking went to
swell the Danish Royal Treasury. Portions of shares could be purchased
for as low a sum as fourpence, and the Hamburg Senate, in self-defence,
and with a great show of propriety, prohibited the traffic of them among
servants and apprentices: which prohibition passed, of course, for next
to nothing, seeing that the temptation was very strong, and the
injunction very weak. It was a curious sight to witness the crowd upon
the occasion of a public drawing in the quaint old square of Altona; a
pebble-dotted space with a dark box in the centre, not unlike the
basement of a gallows. On this stood the wheel, bright in colours and
gold, and by its side two orphan boys in school-costume, who officiated
at the ceremony. One boy turned the wheel, the other drew the numbers,
and called them aloud as he held them before the spectators; while the
blast of a