Dutch shops are not very interesting, and the book-shops in particular are a disappointment.  This is because it is not a reading people.  The newspapers are sound and practical before all things:  business before pleasure is their motto; and native literature is not fostered.  Publishers who bring out new Dutch books usually do so on the old subscription plan.  But the book-shops testify to the popularity of translations from other nations and also of foreign books in the original.  The latest French and German fiction is always obtainable.  Among translations from the English in 1904 I noticed a considerable number of copies of the Sherlock Holmes tales and also of two or three of Miss Corelli’s works.  These for adults; for boys the reading par excellence was a serial romance, in weekly or monthly parts, entitled “De Wilsons en de Ring des Doods of het Spoor van pen Diamenten”.  The Wilsons, I gather, have been having a great run in Holland.  A lurid scene in Maiden Lane was on the cover.  Another story which seemed to be popular had the engaging title “Beleaguered by Jaguars”.

The Hague is very proud of the Bosch—­the great wood to the east of the city, with a few deer and many tall and unpollarded trees, where one may walk and ride or drive very pleasantly.

The Bosch has no restaurant within its boundaries.  I mention this in order to save the reader the mortification of being conducted by a polite but firm waiter back to the gates of the pavilion in which he may reasonably have supposed he was as much entitled to order tea as any of the groups enjoying that beverage at the little tables within the enclosure, whose happiness had indeed led him to enter it.  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.