The artisan continues to work in the old way, each one adheres steadily to his guild; the painters also are incorporated, and execute as a masterpiece a crucifixion with the usual number of prescribed figures. In the Roman Catholic districts they live by very moderate performances of the pictures of the saints; in the Protestant, they paint shields and targets, and the coats of arms of the sovereigns, which are to be seen in numbers on public buildings and over the doors of artisans. Most of the artisans adhere strictly to their old customs, and especially to their guild rights. Any one who enters the guild not according to artisan law, is treated as a bungler, and persecuted with a hatred, the intention of which is to exclude him from their society. Serious business is still transacted in front of the open shops; apprentices are taken, fellows receive the freedom, quarrels are accommodated, and the formula "By your kind permission," which introduces every speech, sounds unceasingly at all the meetings of the masters and the fellows; but the old colloquies and sayings of the middle ages are only half understood, rough jests have been introduced, and the better class already begin not to attach much value to the guild; indeed there are those who consider the old constitution of the guild as a burden, because it stubbornly resists their endeavours to enlarge their manufacturing activity; such was the case with the clothmakers and iron-workers. And the jovial annual feasts which were once the joy and pride of almost every artisan have nearly ceased. The processions in masks, and the old peculiar dances, are incompatible with the culture of a time in which the individual fears nothing so much as to lose his dignity, in which it is preached from the pulpit, that noisy, worldly amusements are sinful, and the learned men of the city find no adequate reason for such disturbance in the streets.