This commerce, inferior as it may be to that of the present day, was perhaps, in proportion to that of other German seaports of the seventeenth century, more important than now. The young Hamburgers went then to the seaports of the German and Atlantic Ocean, and of the Mediterranean, as they now do to America, and founded there commercial houses on their own account. Thus was formed in Hamburg a cosmopolitanism which is still characteristic of that great city. But it was undoubtedly more difficult for that generation to conform themselves to foreign customs, than for the present. It was not devotion to the German empire, but an attachment to the customs of their daily life and family ties, which made the Hamburgers then, as now, rarely consider a foreign country as their fixed home. When they had passed a course of years abroad, in profitable activity, they hastened home, in order to form a household with a German wife. The warm patriotism and the prudent pliancy to foreign customs, which are peculiar to the citizens of small republics, were produced by this kind of life, and also the love of enterprise, and the enlarged views, which were seldom to be found then in the courts of Princes in the interior. Thus the family of a Hamburg patrician of that period shows a number of interesting peculiarities which are well worth dwelling upon. Such a family was that of the Burgomaster Johann Schulte, whose race still survives on the female side. Johann Schulte (who lived 1621-1697), was of ancient family, he had studied at Rostock, Strasburg, and Basle, had travelled, and married whilst secretary to the city council, and had then acted as envoy from Hamburg to Cromwell. He became burgomaster in 1668, was a worthy gentleman of great moderation of character, experienced in all worldly affairs as well as in the government of his good city, a happy husband and father. Some letters are preserved from him to his son, who in 1680 entered into partnership in a Lisbon house. These letters contain many instructive details. But most interesting, is the pleasing insight we get into the family life at that period; the terms the father was on with his children, the heartiness of the feeling on both sides; in the father the quiet dignity, and wisdom of the much experienced man, with a strong feeling of his distinguished position, and in all the members of the family a firm bond of union, which, in spite of all the inevitable disputes within the circle, formed an impenetrable barrier to all without.