Today I went to the British Library to look at some of the books that I was not able to check out of the library or order on Inter-library loan.  The British Library system is very different from what I am accustomed to in the US.  Here, you have to register as a user and then go to the specific reading room of the subject that you’re researching and then you have to request the books that you want and it can take over an hour to receive them.  I requested three books by Jacob Cats and one by Johan van Beverwijck.  They were all in Dutch but I was not looking to read them, I was more interested in the engravings in the books.  The first Jacob Cats book that I looked at was called “Houwelyck” meaning “housewife” in Dutch.  The book has many engravings mostly showing women in the household but they were several which included family scenes.  One in particular reminded very much of a Jan Steen type of painting because it showed a family in disarray with objects scattered all over the floor and a monkey grinning slyly in the midst of it (monkeys usually symbolized the devil).  The men and women shown in the engravings were finely dressed and shown with luxurious items.  A couple of themes kept appearing the engravings - one was a recurring motif of ships full of people and the other was pictures of hens - I will have to look more into the meaning of these subjects.  The next Cats book that I viewed was “Spiegel” which can mean a mirror or a part of a ship in Dutch so I’m not sure of the exact translation.  This books also had several engravings of families - one showed a family making music and they were dressed as roman gods and goddesses.  Another very interesting drawing showed a woman peeling apples which reminded me of Pieter de Hooch’s painting called “A Woman Peeling Apples.”  The third Cats book was called “Moral Emblems.”  It has a variety of different adages and sayings - many of which we say in english as well.  One saying was “A hen lays ever day, but an ostrich only once a year” which I felt could have been related to the theme of hens in “Houwelyck…”  I looked at the book “De schat der gezondheid” by Johan van Beverwijck which was a medical text from the 17th century but which I thought would be interesting to see.  It did not turn out to be very useful but there were some interesting engravings of internal organs according the 17th century thinking of the body.