The Directory teems with relics of the feudal system. There is not a single office belonging to that formal and ceremonious age which is not commemorated within its pages. Whether it were service within the baronial hall or tenure without, all was held by a retinue who thought no office too mean or servile for acceptance. The feudatory, in fact, could seemingly do nothing; everything was done for him. He could eat and drink, ’tis true, and he did both to the great admiration of all beholders; but he had an officer to carve his meat for him; another to change his plate; a third to crack jokes for him, to aid his digestion; a fourth to extend a bowl to wash his fingers; a fifth to hand him a napkin to wipe them; a sixth to hold his wine-cup for him; and a seventh to taste each fresh dish set before him, so that in case poison had been put in the food, his taster might drop down dead instead of himself. Why the baron hadn’t an officer to wipe his nose for him, I can’t say; it has always been a mystery to me. One thing, however, is certain. As he sat and ate and drank, he had a little crowd of officers who thought it only too high a distinction to perform duties so menial, that a scullion in the present day, if asked to undertake some of them, would probably reply, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” At any rate, he would give you a month’s notice, to a certainty. That all these officerships existed, the Directory still shows; for I have no hesitation in saying that the finest and most trustworthy records of the feudal age are to be found, not in the British Museum in Great Russell Street, nor the Bodleian Library at Oxford, but in that great red-backed tome which lies on the shelf in every London warehouse. Imagine our going to these dry and prosaic emporiums of merchandise for an account of a long past state of life, which, with all its barbarism, is well-nigh the most poetical era of English history. I mentioned seven officers who tended the baron at his meals. Taking the Directory, I find twelve Carvers, two Sewers, eleven Napiers and Nappers, six Ewers, one hundred and twenty-five Pages, not to mention our various “Cuppages” (_i.e._ Cup-page), Smallpages, and Littlepages, six “Says,” and twenty-four “Sayers.” ’Tis true there are no “Fools” in the Directory, though there may be plenty out of it; but once it was a very common name indeed, and denoted the _officer_, if I may use the term, whose duty it was to convulse the table with laughter by making the most ludicrous jokes he could invent, backing them up with all sorts of grimaces and contortions. He was a professed punster, too, and had free licence to make them at the expense even of his lord. Indeed, the fool could make a joke with impunity, which would have cost any other man his head. Of course he wore a fool’s-cap as the insignia of his office. The Napier, or Napper, set the napkins, once called “napes.” A curious and silly