They are, however, members of a club, to which he has no more right of entry than any Dutch stranger would have to the Athenaeum.
The Huis ten Bosch, or House in the Wood, which all good travellers must explore, is at the extreme eastern end of the Bosch, with pleasure grounds of its own, including a lake where royal skating parties are held.

This very charming royal residence, now only occasionally occupied, is well worth seeing for its Chinese and Japanese decorations alone--apart from historical associations and mural paintings.

For mural paintings unless they are very quiet I must confess to caring nothing, nor does a bed on which a temporal prince breathed his last, or his first, move me to any degree of interest; but on the walls of one room of the House in the Wood is some of the most charming Chinese embroidery I ever saw, while another is decorated in blue and white of exquisite delicacy.

With these gracious schemes of upholstery I shall always associate the Huis ten Bosch.
At Leyden we shall find traces of Oliver Goldsmith: here at The Hague one may think of Mat.

Prior, who was secretary to our Ambassador for some years and even wrote a copy of spritely verses on the subject.
THE SECRETARY.
Written at The Hague, 1696.
With labour assiduous due pleasure I mix, And in one day atone for the bus'ness of six.
In a little Dutch chaise, on a Saturday night, On my left hand my Horace, a nymph on my right: No memoirs to compose, and no post-boy to move, That on Sunday may hinder the softness of love; For her, neither visits, nor parties at tea, Nor the long-winded cant of a dull refugee: This night and the next shall be hers, shall be mine To good or ill-fortune the third we resign.
Thus scorning the world, and superior to Fate, I drive in my car in professional state; So with Phia thro' Athens Pisistratus rode, Men thought her Minerva, and him a new god.
But why should I stories of Athens rehearse, Where people knew love, and were partial to verse, Since none can with justice my pleasures oppose In Holland half-drowned in int'rest and prose?
By Greece and past ages what need I be tried When The Hague and the present are both on my side?
And is it enough for the joys of the day To think what Anacreon or Sappho would say, When good Vandergoes and his provident Vrow, As they gaze on my triumph, do freely allow, That, search all the province, you'll find no man dar is So blest as the _Englishen Heer Secretar is_?
Let me close this rambling account of The Hague with a passage from James Howell, in one of his conspicuously elaborate _Familiar Letters_, written in 1622, describing some of the odd things to be seen at that day in or about the Dutch city: "We went afterwards to the _Hague_, where there are hard by, though in several places, two wonderful things to be seen, the one of _Art_, the other of _Nature_; that of _Art_ is a Waggon or Ship, or a monster mixt of both like the _Hippocentaure_ who was half man and half horse; this Engin hath wheels and sails that will hold above twenty people, and goes with the wind, being drawn or mov'd by nothing else, and will run, the wind being good, and the sails hois'd up, above fifteen miles an hour upon the even hard sands: they say this Invention was found out to entertain _Spinola_ when he came thither to treat of the last Truce." Upon this wonder, which I did not see, civilisation has now improved, the wind being but a captious and untrustworthy servant compared with petrol or steam.