Home Life in Germany
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IX. HAMBURG AND THE RAUHE HAUS. I Was walking out one morning, after my return to Hamburg, to call upon my friend, the artist before mentioned, when I came suddenly on a sight rather remarkable in such a nineteenth-century city as this. A procession of Spanish cavaliers, apparently, was passing through the streets; just the same dark -haired men, with peaked sombreros, stiff white ruffs, short black cloaks and swords, as Velasquez or Rembrandt delighted to paint. They were following a coffin. It almost seemed as if I were looking at some touching tragedy among the exiled hidalgos of Spain. My friend laughed when I told him my conceit, and assured me that the tragedy was all on the other side?as the family of every respectable Hamburger who died, had to pay ten dollars apiece for each of those hidal
...gos?and funerals frequently cost now some two hundred Thaler, ($150), much to the trouble pf the afflicted families. This gentleman was thinking much of emigrating to America. " Europe was no place for art for years to come. All Germany and the Continent might be in the full blaze of revolution, in a month, at any time. And now," said he., "in such disturbed times,FREE TRADE. 89 there are few purchasers. Besides Hamburg is far too material a city for the encouragement of such a profession. People are wealthy and benevolent here, but there is no great inclination for these pursuits." It was too much a commercial city, he thought, and was inferior in intellectual tastes to most of the cities of Germany. Like all who have studied the history of Hamburg, this gentleman considered its prosperity due to its long and steady adherence to Free Trade. The success of this city alone, however, would be no test of the Protective question, as it is peculiarly a commercial ...
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