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 outside of the house.  All this is surmounted by a roof of red or violet tiles, or tarred plank, interrupted by openings to give light to the attics, and having an abrupt pitch.  These steep roofs look well against the background of a northern sky; the rains run off them in torrents, the snow slips from them; they suit the climate, and do not require to be swept in winter.  Some houses have doors ornamented with rustic columns, scroll-work, recessed pediments, chubby-cheeked caryatides, little angels and loves, stout rosettes and enormous shells, all glued over with whitewash renewed doubtless every year.

The tobacco sellers in Hamburg can not be counted.  At every third step you behold a bare-chested negro cultivating the precious leaf or a Grand Seigneur, attired like the theatrical Turk, smoking a colossal pipe.  Boxes of cigars, with their more or less fallacious vignettes and labels, figure, symmetrically disposed, in the ornamentation of the shop-fronts.  There must be very little tobacco left at Havana, if we can have faith in these displays, so rich in famous brands.

As I have said, it was early morning.  Servant-maids, kneeling on the steps or standing on the window-sills, were going on with the Saturday scrubbing.  Notwithstanding the keen air, they made a display of robust arms bare to the shoulder, tanned and sunburned, red with that astonishing vermilion that we see in some of Rubens’ paintings, which is the joint result of the biting of the north wind and the action of water upon these blond skins; little girls belonging to the poorer classes, with braided hair, bare arms, and low-necked frocks, were going out to obtain articles of food; I shivered in my paletot, to see them so lightly clad.  There is something strange about this; the women of northern countries cut their dresses out in the neck, they go about bare-headed and bare-armed, while the women of the South cover themselves with vests, haicks, pelisses, and warm garments of every description.

Walking on, still at random, I came to the maritime part of the city, where canals take the place of streets.  As yet it was low water, and vessels lay aground in the mud, showing their hulls, and careening over in a way to rejoice a water-color painter.  Soon the tide came up, and everything began to be in motion.  I would suggest Hamburg to artists following in the track of Canaletto, Guardi, or Joyant; they will find, at every step, themes as picturesque as and more new than those which they go to Venice in search of.