ed up and down (plates _24_ and _25_).
Rembrandt's etchings reproducing tramps and street-types, like his
rat-killer, are no doubt so familiar to our readers that we need not
recall them by means of reproductions.

The tidiness and orderly habits of the Dutch were effective in putting
limits to the disorder and dirt which are so often the nuisance of
seaports. This was still more obvious in the interiors of the
dwelling-houses where the Dutch housewives exerted the supremacy of their
cleaning and washing propensity, " cette propriete hollandaise qui
commence par etonner et qui finit, quand on demeure dans le pays, par
devenir un besoin, une necessite{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}une vertu contagieuse, " as Havard says.
A similar sense of order was to be noted in the administration of public
charities: orphanages, asylums, hospitals, and similar institutions were
founded and generously endowed, mostly by private initiative, and were
organised in such a careful and sensible way that most of them have
lasted, under the same rules, until our days.(4) Ascending [Plate 26. A
Quacksalver on a Market-Place. ]

Plate 26. A Quacksalver on a Market-Place. After the drawing by
Rembrandt. In the collection of Frederich August II, in Dresden.

to higher levels we again observe, in the town's democratic magistrates,
that orderly spirit and caution which enabled these practical, vigilant
authorities to consolidate the town's importance and to develop it to the
highest power in the Netherlands, dreaded by foreign competitors and
possessing, so to say, the supremacy of the sea. They were characteristic
representatives of the citizens' nature: cool-headedness and a very strong
feeling of independence, rooted in their own and their fathers'
emancipation from Spanish domination, and in their energetic
tradesmanship. We here touch a more abstract subject, not less essential
in constituting the general disposition of the town, namely, the nature
and spirit of its individuals, forming, so to say, the town's own soul.
This is a point that should not be overlooked, as the Dutch character and
demeanour are two things often misunderstood, which certainly require some
insight and explanation in order to be appreciated.

The modern civilized person who found himself transplanted in Amsterdam
250 years ago, might certainly be displeased with the behaviour of even
the better classes. We readily concede that their mann