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DOJIF.STIC MANXEBS OE TUE riUJSSIANS.
liouses at Schaffhausen, have all thc cumbrous inconveniencesof past architecture, witliont any of its beauty,—being merethings of cobwebs and dry-rot, and utterly wanting thequaint grace of old-fashioned forms.
The streets, which are narrow as a Scotch wynd, and closeas the Jews' Quarter at Frankfort, twist about like a river,and are paved with big shingles, that surely must be petrifiedpotatoes, over which we walk as pleasantly as we shouldupon a bed of small cannon-balls. Not a cart, nor scarcelyan ox-wagon, interrupts your stroll in the road, and you meetas few people by the way as you do in an English countrytown during church hours on a Sunday.
The places of business here are of the most primitive andunostentatious character. The baker, for instance, writes theprice of bread with chalk on a slate that dangles outside thedoor, and serves bis customers with the Brödchens through anopen pane in his parlour window. The butcher's shop iswired all over in front, and you can just see in the darknessone or two scraps of meat hanging at the back. Not afruiterer's, fishmonger's, poulteier's, nor even pastrycook's, isto be found in the place; nor do we remember to have seen amilliner's or tailor's establishment within the city walls—thoughwe stopped nearly a month in the town, and trudged overevery inch of the paving. Even the bookseller's, one had tohunt for, as diligently as boys are wont to do after the plumsin a school-pudding; and here we found a case of mattedsticks of sealing-wax and limp " colle a bouche " fixed againstthe door-post. The Mode-waaren Handlung (haberdasher's)was the only trade that could boast a regulär shop-front; andeven this had a sash füll of panes hardly bigger than sheetsof letter-paper. The sole business that seemed to thrive wasthe publican's, for every sixth house was a Weinwirthschaft ora Bierbrauerei, or eise a Gasthaus, or a Caffe u. Restauration.
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