life are properly suspended. My little
Dutchwoman, looks serious, and attempts no
conversation, as she does with the gentlemen
who bring her bread and milk of a morning.
He too,—Intelligencer, as he is called,—is
impassive, and has his features composed to a
sad smile. Terrible nightmare this must be
in a social system, these black spectres
coming to your door periodically, stalking up
the steps at any hour, festive or otherwise,
with their budget. It is Pale Death knocking
impartially at the dwellings of the rich and
of the poor, fearfully realised. Conceive a
dear friend lying sick, and in extremity,
perhaps. What anxious hearts and troubled
spirits must the news, that the sable
intelligencer is coming down the street set on the
watch! Will he pass the door?

I see, one day, a defunct borne out to be
interred in an ancient church, and it is surprising
to count the vast number of these gentlemen
that wait on him to the grave. The poor
deceased is, as it were, mobbed by them.
They crowd about him in every shade of
sepulchral costume; cocked hats, cloaks, veils,
darkening the air. They are in possession
of the poor remains, and rule despotically
while their little reign endures; as do their
undertaking brethren all the world over.
Terrible invasion of the one dark man, whom
none has spirit or heart to gainsay: awful
scrupulousness of white neckcloth and beadle
dignity, cowing utterly the mourning and
bereaved.

"O! the vultures! the vultures! " says
mine host of the Grey-headed Nobleman
between his teeth (he has stolen behind me
softly as I take the contemplative man's
recreation); " they scent the dead from afar
off, and flock round greedily! See the
sleek rascal! how briskly he trips along to
his work. O! the vultures!"

"Why so hard on the intelligencers ? " I
ask. " There must be necessity for them, or
they could not be at all."

"Ah! " says mine host with a Frenchman's
grimace, "you see not what a country this of
ours is! We groan under them: we let
them fix their talons in us, and yet we bear
with them. And why? because of our own
wretched pride!"

"How so?" I ask.

My host twisted himself eelwise, as he
made answer, " Because we hold it a grand
and glorious thing to have the vultures at
our funerals. The greater number, the
greater state. The more vultures, the more
grief. The more intelligencers, the greater
man. The neighbours will whisper together
and say: See how great this man must have
been, having so many vultures!"

I here think within myself of a certain
people who are given to such things as
mutes, baton-men, feathers, and Flanders
horses; and of their neighbours who
delight in Wakes, contending with one
another who shall be foremost in such
funereal display. Who gather their friends
at a groaning board as for a festival, and
charter the service of a long train of
Keeners, Wailers, and such functionaries,
who have small heed if the survivors'
substance be all swallowed up in the profitless
display. What will the neighbours say
—what will the many-headed Mrs. Grundy
say?

Curious enough my host proceeds to tell
me that there are Dutch Keeners also, whose
name sounds like Huildebekers or Howlers.
You pay these gentlemen a certain consideration,
and it is to be presumed they will
come and howl over the remains with all
good will. Working himself into righteous
indignation, he anathematises the whole
system, root and branches. Poor soul! I
suspect he has had to do with them before
now, and that they have wrung his withers
sorely.

Those who have sojourned in France, and
who have been there afflicted with loss of
friend or relative, will call to mind the troop
of black men in cleanly neckcloths, too, and
shining black, who are wont to make invasion
of the house at such dreary seasons.
They will be mindful how these same black
men would come into formal possession of
effects, sealing up carefully, opening secret
places, ransacking drawers and trunks,
appraising all things, with a cruel exactness and
endless delays.

So much with respect to defunct
Mynheers. There are some other little points
concerning him (when in the flesh) which
may be worth noting in this place. I am
utterly surprised at Mynheer's not being more
of a reading man. Rather, it should be no
surprise to one who thinks over the nature
of the man and his ways; but still it remains
to be accounted for, taking it commercially,
how there should be so few book shops
in the great towns—the great towns,—
for in the smaller you might hunt
hopelessly for days, and go nigh to perishing
for want of literary pabulum. But take
Amsterdam—a notable place. I do suppose
(under correction) there are not a dozen
book-stores in the whole city; which number
might, under certain circumstances, be taken
as amply sufficient for an earnest reading
community. But, there is then the quality
of these book-stores to be taken into account.
Firstly, they are small narrow places,
furnished scantily with a few shelves; the whole
stock to be taken at say from three to four
hundred volumes; these, too, mostly of the
ephemeral order, political or religious. Some
of the dozen are altogether French, and sell
mainly French novels, imported. Some
men's shelves are almost filled with those
enticing little volumes, reprints of English
works, done at Leipsic, clearly brought there
for the English passer-by or sojourner.
With these deductions, the native book
demand seems to shrink away to very small