All these thousands of people, business-men, workmen, housewives, small traders, went about in comparatively simple dresses, in which the black and discreet colours predominated. Against this sober background, the multi-coloured garments of the numerous strangers from over-seas were set off sharply: those of the Levantines, Persians, Poles, and others, who congregated in this international mart. What was said of the citizens’ dress does not imply that luxurious costumes were unknown in Amsterdam; the younger people of course donned lighter and more elegant clothes, and married ladies at home knew very well how to charm the eyes of their visitors. Gradually, as Amsterdam’s wealth increased, the upper classes became more luxurious, and towards the end of Rembrandt’s life we see a complete change effected: we may say that when the architects preferably imitated the Italian Palladio or the French Mansart, and when the feebler painters followed the degenerating taste of the public,— then the leading classes took to French fashions, and wigs came into use. Rembrandt’s pictures show us sufficiently that he kept aloof from this deplorable but fated change, and we must imagine him moving within the classes which remained loyal to the solid habits of the first period of his life in Amsterdam. Mingling with this traffic we find the children amusing themselves, venting their love of ridicule and, above all things, fighting, in those parts from which they were later on banished on account of a more regular education, or because of certain districts turning into exclusive shop- or office-quarters. Their playfulness fell again and again into wild excesses, which forced the magistrate to pass prohibitive laws, in order to protect citizens from injury and damage. Add to this the great number of beggars, peasant-people, many of them, impoverished by the wars, bohemians, highwaymen, remnants of army-trains, all flocking to the great centre in the hope of finding assistance, strolling musicians, quacksalvers and mountebanks at market time (_plate 26_), periodic parades of gaily-dressed civic guards. Add to this the fairs, and we shall have completed in our imagination a scene which is of the liveliest, and certainly of a far greater charm and variety than our present more monotonous and regulated existence. Rembrandt’s [Plate 25. Children Refore A Street Door: The One In The Middle With A “Rommelpot”] Plate 25. Children Refore A Street Door: The One In The Middle With A “Rommelpot”. After the drawing by Rembrandt, in the British Museum, London