ed as well as wounded me--yet never did drops of
anguish like these bedew the cheeks of infantine innocence--and why
should they mine, that never was stained by a blush of guilt? Innocent
and credulous as a child, why have I not the same happy thoughtlessness?
Adieu!

LETTER XXIII.

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,