to bear you off to see the Dom, the shrine of the
three kings, and the bones of St. Ursula's twelve
thousand virgins; now, a solitary man, hinting at
no sight to be seen, offers to carry my baggage
to an inn.  But I leave my traps at the station,
and having two hours to pass before the starting
of the train, I walk through the town, and
find it indeed deserted.  The big Rhine-bordering
hotels are closed, half the Jean Marie
Farinas have shut up their Eau-de-Cologne
shops, while the other two hundred and fifty
seem thoroughly unexpectant of custom: the
Wechsel Comptoir (or money changers), whose
ideas as to the current value of a sovereign
are very vacillating, now have closed their
shutters, and the itinerant photograph-sellers
have fled.  So I skulk back to the station, and
there get a portion of a tough hare, aud some
red cabbage, and some kraut and potato salad,
drink a bottle of Rudesheimer, and throw myself
into the train and prepare for a night's rest.

I get it, with the exception of three rapid
exits for refreshment purposes, at Minden, Hanover,
and Lehrte.  I sleep steadily on until
half-past seven A.M., when we arrive at Harburg,
our terminal station.  Hamburg lies on the
other side of the Elbe, and the passage of the
river is made in summer by a steam-boat, but
now the Elbe is frozen, and the crossing is long
and difficult.  As I am getting my portmanteau,
I see a good-looking fresh-coloured boy in a
huge fur cap standing, on the box of a droschky
in the court-yard; he motions to me inquiringly,
I respond, and next minute he has rushed up,
has collared my portmanteau, has pushed me
into his carriage, and is standing upon the
box, whooshing and holloaing to his two mettlesome
little steeds. Besides his fur cap, he wears
a short sheepskin jacket, with the collar turned
up round his face, thick breeches, and well-
greased boots reaching to his knees.  He has a
large pair of fur gloves too, and a long whip, and
a short cigar, and a great flow of animal spirits,
which impels him jocosely to lay the whip across
everybody he meets: shivering peasants with
yokes carrying red pails, solemn douaniers,
pompous post-couriers, sturdy farmers, fat
burghers, all with their heads buried in their
coat collars.  In five minutes we arrive at the
banks of the Elbe, where we have to wait a
quarter of an hour until the steam-ferry is ready
to receive us.  The scene is desolate enough;
the ice has begun to break up, but as yet has
"given" but little; a bitter north-east wind skins
the thin bald dreary landscape, flat and treeless;
and the horses attached to the various carriages
shiver and rattle their harness.  The peasants
have put off their yokes, and stamp up and down
beside their red pails, the douaniers scowl over
their pipes through the windows of the little
toll-house, the post-courier slips on the frozen
road and falls headlong, coming up again with
a comic expression of ruffled dignity and a
mouth full of strange oaths, and nobody seems
happy save my fur-capped droschky boy, who,
by dodging and whipping, has edged his
carriage into the foremost rank.  Then a shout
announces that the steam-ferry is ready, and
with heavy jolts and bumps we rumble on to it,
carriages, horsemen, peasants, all closely packed
together, with some twenty men in the bows
armed with long iron-tipped poles to break up
the solid, and push off the floating, ice.  Steam
is up, the fat little funnel throws out angry
snorts, and we are off; but after two minutes
come upon a solid mass of ice which defies our
charge, and defies, too, all the prods of the pole-
bearers: so we have to back and steer into
another channel, through which, by dint of
pushing off the floating icebergs, and after many
weary stoppages, we arrive at the other side.
Then down a long, long chaussée, with never-
ending poplars on either side, bounded by a
broad arm of the Elbe, so thoroughly frozen
that we drive bodily over the ice, with no
other difficulty, than the uncertain foothold of
the horses; then another chaussée, straggling
outskirts of a town, wooden bridges over canals,
where broad-bottomed boats lay, like the larks
and leverets in the pie immortalised by Tennyson,
"embedded and enjellied," then through a
handsome faubourg, along a broad road skirting
an enormous sheet of water and bordered by
handsome houses, and then pulled short up by
the door of Streit's Hotel.

Very good is Streit, very handsome is his house,
and very excellent is his accommodation, although
by reason of my becoming tenant of the only
disengaged room in the hotel I am mounted
up very high, and my chamber has a dreary
look-out into a back court-yard or flowerless
garden.  For Streit is full.  At Streit's door I
noticed two sentinels on guard, and in Streit's
first floor are reposing princes of the land, who
are thus guarded, and noble officers, the princes'
staff.  His Royal Highness of Prussia is chez
Streit, and smaller Transparencies are billeted
about in other mansions of this noble street,
which is called the Jungfernstieg.  A very short
acquaintance with Streit proves to me that his
visitors are principally military; lumbering men
with clinking spurs, and huge overcoats, and
sweeping moustaches, brush by me in the
passages; and I am continually tumbling over
the regular soldier-servant, he of the short hair,
stiff gait, and ears sticking out on the side
of his head, like the handles of a jug.  I am
disposed to believe that Streit imagines I, too,
am military, when he hands me a letter from,
high authority which has been waiting my
arrival, and which bears an enormous seal with
the impression of the town arms, and has a
strictly official and somewhat military appearance.
Streit, I think, recognises the style of the
address, but little wots Streit of the contents of
this document, which enjoins me to return to
England so soon as my necessary rest is accomplished.
In his happy ignorance, and doubtless
thinking that he has me his customer for days,
Streit suggests my being tired and going to bed.
But—though I don't confide this to Streit—I
have only one day in which to see Hamburg,
so I scorn his suggestion, and order breakfast.
After a splendid bath—Streit has a very good