The aanspreker was once occasionally assisted by the huilebalk, but I am afraid his day is over.  The huilebalk accompanied the aansprekers from house to house and wept on the completion of their sad message.  He wore a wide-awake hat with a very large brim and a long-tailed coat.  If properly paid, says my informant, real tears coursed down his cheeks; in any case his presence was a luxury possible only to the rich.

The aanspreker is called in also at the other end of life.  Assuming a more jocund air, he trips from house to house announcing little strangers.

That the Dutch are a healthy people one might gather also from the character of their druggists.  In this country, even in very remote towns, one may reveal one’s symptoms to a chemist or his assistant feeling certain that he will know more or less what to prescribe.  But in Holland the chemists are often young women, who preside over shops in which one cannot repose any confidence.  One likes a chemist’s shop at least to look as if it contained reasonable remedies.  These do not.  Either our shops contain too many drugs or these too few.  The chemist’s sign, a large comic head with its mouth wide open (known as the gaper), is also subversive of confidence.  A chemist’s shop is no place for jokes.  In Holland one must in short do as the Dutch do, and remain well.

Rotterdam’s first claim to consideration, apart from its commercial importance, is that it gave birth to Erasmus, a bronze statue of whom stands in the Groote Market, looking down on the stalls of fruit.  Erasmus of Rotterdam—­it sounds like a contradiction in terms.  Gherardt Gherardts of Rotterdam is a not dishonourable cacophany—­and that was the reformer’s true name; but the fashion of the time led scholars to adopt a Hellenised, or Latinised, style.  Erasmus Desiderius, his new name, means Beloved and long desired.  Grotius, Barlaeus, Vossius, Arminius, all sacrificed local colour to smooth syllables.  We should be very grateful that the fashion did not spread also to the painters.  What a loss it would be had the magnificent rugged name of Rembrandt van Rhyn been exchanged for a smooth emasculated Latinism.

Rotterdam had another illustrious son whose work as little suggests his birthplace—­the exquisite painter Peter de Hooch.  According to the authorities he modelled his style upon Rembrandt and Fabritius, but the influence of Rembrandt is concealed from the superficial observer.  De Hooch, whose pictures are very scarce, worked chiefly at Delft and Haarlem, and it was at Haarlem that he died in 1681.  If one were put to it to find a new standard of aristocracy superior to accidents of blood or rank one might do worse than demand as the ultimate test the possession of either a Vermeer of Delft or a Peter de Hooch.