The theatre at the Hague is tastefully arranged, and supplied with a tolerable set of French comedians. The centre box is appropriated for the royal family, and is elegantly fitted up. Before the conversion of the republic into a kingdom, when the government resided in the hands of the Batavian directory, the ornaments of the box which was allotted to them, were very unworthy of the rank of the personages for whose accommodation it was reserved: a piece of paper, on which was written, “Le loge du directoire Batave,” and pasted on the box door, alone announced the dignity of its destination. The usual national spirit of economy used to display itself in the Dutch theatre, where, to prevent a useless consumption of tallow, whenever the musicians quitted the orchestra, they were bound by contract to extinguish the lights by which they read their music. In many tradesmen’s houses at this day in Holland, winter courtships are carried on in the dark, the union of warm love and rigid economy being considered a very laudable conjunction. If we are to give credit to the ridiculous story which is still believed at a village called Loosduynen, about three miles from the Hague, the ladies are far from being economical in breeding. A Dutch author has gone so far as to declare, that he had seen the three hundred and sixty-five children of the Countess of Henesberg, and with pleasant minuteness describes them to be of the size of shrimps, and Erasmus believed the story. Those who have the hardihood to differ from such authorities, explain away the miracle by stating, that on the _third_ day of _January_, the beggar wished the countess, who expected to lie in every hour, might have as many children as there had been days in the year, and that she on that day was delivered of _three_ children. The Hague was once celebrated for its many elegant, and especially for its literary societies; the latter have declined, whilst those of France have flourished and improved, amidst the frightful fluctuations of revolutionary tumult. Erasmus, Grotius, and Boerhaave, have conferred immortality upon the letters of Holland, as they would upon those of any nation; but the literary glory of the country seems not to have spread upon the demise of these illustrious sages. Hooft, Vondel, and Antonides, are known in Holland, but not out of it; and we have heard but faintly of Huygens, Graveszande, and Vandoveron in physic; of Voet in jurisprudence, and Burman and Gronovius in the belles lettres.