Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
History
Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 5: Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, Part 1
Austria -- Description and travel; Germany -- Description and travel; Switzerland -- Description and travel
Farther on you observe the Palace of Justice, the bank, etc., built in
the style you know well, adored by Philistines of every land. Doubtless
that house must have cost enormously; it contains all possible luxury
and comfort. You feel that the mollusk of such a shell can be nothing
less than a millionaire. Permit me, however, to love better the old
house with its overhanging stories, its roof of irregular tiles, and
all its little characteristic details, telling of former generations. To
be interesting, a city must have the air of having lived, and, in a
sense, of having received from man a soul. What makes these magnificent
streets built yesterday so cold and so tiresome, is that they are not
yet impregnated with human vitality.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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