This forest of salmon-colored masts, with their maze of cordage and their yellowish-brown sails drying in the sun, these tarred sterns with apple-green decks, these lateen-yards threatening the windows of the neighboring houses, these derricks standing under plank roofs shaped like pagodas, these tackles lifting heavy packages out of vessels and landing them in houses, these bridges opening to give passage to vessels, these clumps of trees, these gables overtopped here and there by spires and belfries; all this bathed in smoke, traversed by sunlight and here and there returning a glitter of polished metal, the far-off distance blue and misty, and the foreground full of vigorous color, produced effects of the most brilliant and piquant novelty.  A church-tower, covered with plates of copper, springing from this curious medley of rigging and of houses, recalled to me by its odd green color the tower of Galata, at Constantinople....

As the hour advanced, the crowd became more numerous, and it was largely composed of women.  In Hamburg they seem to enjoy great license.  Very young girls come and go alone without anyone’s noticing it, and—­a remarkable thing!—­children go to school by themselves, little basket on the arm, and slate in hand; in Paris, left to their own free will, they will run off to play marbles, tag, or hop-scotch.

Dogs are muzzled in Hamburg all the week, but on Sundays they are left at liberty to bite whom they please.  They are taxed, and appear to be esteemed; but the cats are sad and unappreciated.  Recognizing in me a friend, they cast melancholy glances at me, saying in their feline language, to which long use has given me the key: 

“These Philistines, busy with their money-getting, despise us; and yet our eyes are as yellow as their louis d’or.  Stupid men that they are, they believe us good for nothing but to catch rats; we, the wise, the meditative, the independent, who have slept upon the prophet’s sleeve, and lulled his ear with the whir of our mysterious wheel!  Pass your hand over our backs full of electric sparkles—­we allow you this liberty, and say to Charles Baudelaire that he must write a fine sonnet, deploring our woes.”

As the Luebeck boat was not to leave until the morrow, I went to Wilkin’s to get my supper.  This famous establishment occupies a low-ceiled basement, which is divided into cabinets ornamented with more show than taste.  Oysters, turtle-soup, a truffled filet, and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot iced, composed my simple bill of fare.  The place was filled, after the Hamburg fashion, with edibles of all sorts; things early and things out of season, dainties not yet in existence or having long ceased to exist, for the common crowd.  In the kitchen they showed us, in great tanks, huge sea-turtles which lifted their scaly heads above the water, resembling snakes caught between two platters.  Their little horny eyes looked with uneasiness at the light which was held near them, and their flippers, like oars of some disabled galley, vaguely moved up and down, as seeking some impossible escape.  I trust that the personnel of the exhibition changes occasionally.