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him lying at full length upon the grass, with his face hidden on his folded arms. With a sudden instinct of grief and terror she knew that he was crying, and falling down on her knees by his side, murmured, amidst her sobs

"Oh, pray forgive me! you so dearly and so truly! Roland Lansdell lifted

Pray do not be angry with me! I love
Only say that you forgive me."

his face and looked at her. Ah, what a reproachful look it was, and how long it lived in her memory and disturbed her peace!

"I will forgive you," he answered sternly, "when I learn to endure my life without you."

He dropped his head again upon his folded arms, and Isabel knelt by his side for some minutes watching him silently; but he never stirred; and she was too much frightened and surprised by his anger, and remorsefully impressed with a vague sense of her own wrong-doing, to dare address him further. So at last she got up and went away. She began to feel that she had been, somehow or other, very wicked, and that her sin had brought misery upon this man whom she loved.

The Streets of the World.

BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA.

HAMBURG: THE ALSTER BASSIN.

A BASIN is not a street. Nay, a huge reservoir of water may be held as directly contradistinguished to a paved area. "A lake is the opposite to an island; a tower is the opposite to a well; and I, madam, am the opposite to a virtuous personage," says the modest and candid Gubetta to Lucrezia Borgia in Hugo's deathless drama. Why, then, bearing the fitness of things and the congruity of titles in any respect, should I call the Alster Bassin at Hamburg a "Street of the World"? The world, certainly, will tolerate a good many outrages in the way of misnomers. A quart-bottle does not necessarily hold a quart,—indeed, by an agreeable and ingenious process of making things "small by degrees and beautifully less," the "reputed" quart has come to contain not much over a pint. Thus we have agreed to accept as "reputed" right reverend, illustrious, noble, gallant, honourable, and learned personages, a number of people who are neither the one nor the other, but partake more or less of the qualities of the Imbecile and the Impostor. The age of legal fictions has been succeeded by that of social fibs. In law the spade is really called a spade, or the pleadings can be at least amended till the proper designation be fixed upon; but outside the court the spade is something quite different, and the clodhopper who wields it is an "agriculturist," or a "proletarian," or a "predial servant," or something classical and nonsensical of that kind. Every thing in this hopeful era is any thing but what it seems and professes to be. Citric acid is called lemonade; noyeau isn't made from almonds; the Archbishop of Canterbury has lost his wig; and the silver trowel with which one of the "fictitious" "noble" or "illustrious" gentlemen already hinted at lays the first stone of a new building, presumably dedicated to the sick and helpless, but in reality established for the purpose of giving fat salaries to a secretary and a staff of doctors, is nothing but a fishslice in disguise.

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If the Alster Bassin isn't a street, why should I, who am making such a pretence to honesty of purpose and genuineness of nomenclature, set it down in this schedule as a street? My reason is a simple one: to those who know Hamburg it should be obvious; and it will become apparent, I hope, to all after the briefest of explanations. The quay, or flagged promenade, which skirts the Alster answers all the purposes of a street; the houses, shops, and hotels which border it are among the handsomest in the city; and all the life and bustle and merriment of Hamburg, decidedly the liveliest, merriest, and most bustling place of

pleasure and business combined to be found in the North of Europe," grow to full perfection on the pleasant borders of the Alster Bassin.

Hamburg, I believe, is on the Elbe; but the Alster is the Alster. The Elbe is full of ships, corn and hide and timber laden, emigrantsteamers and cattle-steamers; but the Alster Bassin is smooth and tranquil as a millpond. By the way, it is nothing but a millpond, for it is crossed by a dyke or embankment having a lock in it; and on this dyke the actual and tangible windmill clement is strong, giving a curiously unsophisticated and patriarchal savour to the huge teeming mart of commerce. Outside and all around you find bargaining, chaffering, broking and discounting, tall masts, cobweb-rigging, patched sails, pitched hulls, tarry sailors, hemp, chain-cables, jute, and shipchandlers. Along passes in incessant procession a feverish throng with their brains full of figures, and the golden calf in all its glory dancing before their eyes; but in the calm muddy waters of the Alster Bassin there is peace, and nothing bigger than a pleasure-boat seems permitted to ruffle its dun-coloured surface.

I came to Hamburg a good many years ago-it was subsequent to the fire, though-through Schleswig Holstein and the Danish town of Altona. I was only two days in Schleswig Holstein, so that you must not expect me to give you any definite information on the vexed question of the Duchies. I suppose there must be some body some where who comprehends the controversy in all its bearings; but I must confess, with the Muscovites, "Nisnaiou!" and I question whether there are a great many English statesmen who are much more enlightened on the real state of the case than the ignoramus now in possession of the floor. Earl Russell, of course, thinks he knows all about it, and, in interminable discourses, lectures the Danes about their duties to Schleswig, and Schleswig's duties to them; but, then, the author of Don Carlos is a confident man. Long ago Sidney Smith described him as perfectly ready to take the command of the Channel fleet, or perform the operation for the stone; and in old age, if some of his energy has departed from him,. he has not lost his faith in his own omniscience. Happy the doctor with only one disciple; and even happier perhaps is he that has none. When I visited Schleswig Holstein, party-feeling ran high; and in this present year, I am informed, party-feeling is running higher still; but, run high, run low, the general issue remains at a dead level of inconceivable boredom. A German schoolmaster in Schleswig told me that the Danes were all liars and thieves; I think he accused them likewise of drunkenness. A Dane in Rendsburg, who, like the majority of his countrymen, spoke English very well, informed me confidentially that the Holsteiners were "a bad lot." Amidst this conflicting testimony, how to discover truth? how to light on the needle lying perdu in this intolerably musty bundle of hay? Perhaps the best thing to do would be to confide the investigation of the Schleswig-Holstein question (with powers to administer oaths and commit witnesses for contempt) to a

mixed commission consisting of Baron Liebig, Sir David Brewster, Sir Charles Lyell, MM. Guizot and Michelet, Mr. Darwin, Bishop Colenso, General Butler, Zadkiel the almanac-maker, Dr. Cumming, M. Mathieu de la Drôme, and Mr. Home the medium, to see whether they can make any thing of it. If they can, if the seemingly insoluble problem should be solved, I should recommend that the Schleswig-Holstein question be put once and for ever on the shelf, and that nobody should, under pain of death, or at least solitary incarceration for life in a cellar full of blue-books, be permitted to mention it in civilised society.

There is not much that is worth seeing in Schleswig Holstein. Rendsburg is a wooden town, and Flensburg is a wooden town, and the inhabitants, down to the babes and sucklings, have a stolid and wooden look. There is a pleasant, and I daresay ancient, street-custom observed, of the elders of the town seating themselves in the evening on benches beneath the wide-projecting wooden perches (often curiously and richly carved) of their houses, and smoking long pipes and drinking sedate draughts of mawkish beer, while the women and girls stand spinning by the door-lintel behind, and the children gambol, in a grave and decorous manner, round their knees. In quiet and placid chat, broken only by long-drawn puffs and sups, they pass in convivial innocence the time till dusk. I used to fancy that they were discussing the Schleswig-Holstein question. When it is dark, they bolt and bar up with infinite care the dingy wooden boxes they call houses, and then, as no lights are to be seen burning in any Flensburg or Rendsburg windows, save those of the inns and the watchhouse, I fancy the inhabitants go to bed and dream of the Schleswig-Holstein question. A mild, harmless, sleepy generation; somewhat too prone perhaps to fall into the sloth or dormouse condition of existence, and go to sleep from year's end to year's end, did not a kind Providence give them this chronic SchleswigHolstein controversy to preserve them in at least a dozy, drowsy, winking semi-wakefulness. Did not an old dramatist liken some people's souls to salt, of which they had just enough to keep their bodies from putrefaction?

Altona is not a much more amusing town than Flensburg or Rendsburg, being a seaport of the shabbiest, and redolent of vile odours. Cardiff, in Wales, does not ill resemble it. The environs, however, are exceedingly pretty; for here the wealthy Hamburg merchants have their villeggiature, many of them on the most sumptuous scale; and hither come the Hamburgers generally to enjoy the delights of a "Sunday out." Altona, indeed, is but a suburb of the great free capital of the Hanse towns; and the Krongarten at the first-named place stands in the light of a Cremorne to the metropolis; but Altona has a distinct nationality, being subject to the Danish crown; and I need scarcely say that the townspeople hate the alien suburbans with immense cordiality. The Hamburgian invidia takes, however, a practical turn, and resolves itself, like every thing else in the Hanseatic mind, into a question of marcs banco. Sunday is, as I have said, the great day for the people of Ham

burg to make trips to Altona, and revel in the cheap and inoffensive pleasures of the Krongarten. Bread eaten in secret is pleasant; and the high and mighty Senate of Hamburg turn the indulgence in politically forbidden fruits to their own profit. The city has many gates. Those towards the Danish frontier they shut at an earlier hour on Sunday than they do on any other day in the week; and those who have lingered til benighted in the Krongarten can only hope to regain their homes by paying a smart tax to the Hanseatic revenues at the gate. It may be objected that this fiscal infliction is slightly illogical, and that the rod does not fall on the proper shoulders, seeing that the Germans are punished for staying late at Denmark, and that the Danes, who have got as much as ever they possibly could out of the Germans at the Altona Krongarten, are not punished at all; but, at all events, the great Chinese principle of legislation is carried out some body is punished; and the Senate of Hamburg are the better for their vindictiveness by so many marks banco a-year.

I should strongly advise you, as a friend, not to quarrel with their High Mightinesses, or their Ineffable Transparencies, or their Egregious Perfunctorinesses, or whatever else the strict title conceded to them by etiquette, but not mentioned in the Almanach de Gotha,-the Senate of Hamburg. These free cities are ten hundred times more swift and ruthless in their government than towns belonging to confessed despots. Like Mr. Winter, Theodore Hook's surveyor of taxes, their actions are summary. Therefore I should counsel you to give the Senate of Hamburg "whatever it axes." If you grumble at your hotel-bill; if you are surcharged at the railway-station; if you are cheated at the box-office of the theatre; if you have a dispute with a cabman; or a Vierlanderinn (of whom more anon) demands for the bouquet you have purchased above ten times the market-price,-I should warn you against the consequences of persistently recalcitrant behaviour. You may, with the most innocent intentions in the world, get yourself into trouble with the Senate without being aware of it. The Querelle d'Allemand-that is, the cunning German process of fastening a quarrel on a perfectly inoffensive stranger-is by no means a myth in Hamburg. Pay, and have done with it; or before you are twenty-four hours older, you may discover, even to the wailing and gnashing of teeth, that the Senate has a crow to pluck with you. Either your passport is not en règle; or you have contravened some petty municipal law; or you have not taken out a license to do that which you never dreamt of doing; or you have conspired against the Senate; or attempted to set the Alster Bassin on fire. It does not much matter. The Senate will be down upon you. Therefore pay what is asked, and dine at the table-d'hôte, and thank God.

Although tyrannical when crossed, the Hamburgers are not a tithe so meticulously and vexatiously quarrelsome as the constitutional Prussians, on whose dull sour capital I lately descanted. I have a perfect horror of Prussian officials, and give them the widest berth whenever I

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