In my way to the palace in the Wood, near this square, I passed by a vast triumphal arch made of wood, painted to imitate stone, and adorned with a number of complimentary inscriptions in Latin, in honour of the king and queen, who passed through it on the 23d of June last, when they made their public entry; and in a vast field adjoining to the wood was a lofty temporary obelisk of the same materials, which formed one of the principal objects of a magnificent fête recently given by the French commander in chief in honour of their majesties, which was conducted in the highest style of Parisian taste. The day when I visited the wood was remarkably fine; this spot, so dear to the Dutch, is nearly two English miles long, about three-quarters of a mile broad, and contains a fine display of magnificent oaks growing in native luxuriance. Antony Waterloo made the greatest part of his studies from this spot and its environs. The ground upon which it grows, and the country about it, undulate a little, a circumstance of agreeable novelty, and the whole is a truly delightful walk, more romantic and umbrageous than our mall of St. James’s, and surpassed only by the garden of the Thuilleries. This wood has been held sacred with more than pagan piety. War and national want, that seldom spare in their progress, committed no violations here. Although the favourite place of royal recreation, yet, in the fury of the revolution, not a leaf _trembled but in the wind_. Philip II. in the great war with Spain, issued his mandate for preserving it: hostile armies have marched through it without offering it a wound, and the axe of the woodman has never resounded in it. Even children are taught or whipt into veneration for it, so that their mischievous hands never strip it of a bough. Once, however, it is recorded, that at a period of great state necessity, in 1576, their high mightinesses sat in judgment upon its noble growth, and doomed it to fall: the moment their decree was known, the citizens flew to the meeting, remonstrated with a degree of feeling which did honour to their taste; and upon learning that the object of its doom was to raise a certain sum to assist in replenishing the nearly exhausted coffers of the republic, they immediately entered into a contribution, and presented the amount to the “high and mighty masters” of the sacred grove.