In this palace, amongst many other precious works of art, was the celebrated picture of King William the Third, who appointed the famous Godfrey Scalken, when he was in London, to paint his portrait by candlelight: the painter placed a taper in the hands of his majesty, to hold it in a situation most favourable to the designs of the artist, during which the tallow melted and dropped on the fingers of the monarch, who endured it with great composure, for fear of embarrassing the painter, who very tranquilly continued his work, without offering to pause for a minute: it is not much to the credit of the prince of the country to record, that this blunt enthusiasm for his art lost poor Scalken the favour of the court, and of persons of fashion, and he retired to the Hague, where he had a prodigious demand for his small paintings. The furniture of this, which, as well as of the other palaces, was superb, but old fashioned, was sold by the French, upon the pretence that their arms were directed against the Prince of Orange personally. In this palace the Stadtholder and his family used to indulge his subjects in that ridiculous custom of eating before them on certain days; a custom which was a fit appendage to another, that of keeping dwarfs and fools about the royal person. How this stupid usage came to be adopted at first I know not, for one would naturally think that the situation least calculated to inspire awe and veneration, those great supports of royalty, amongst subjects towards their rulers, would be that in which a mere animal appetite is gratified. In England such splendid folly has been long discontinued. The plain manner in which the Prince of Orange and his family resided at this palace, is thus described by the late ingenious Mr. Ireland. “The reception we met with as strangers, was highly flattering. It was the character of Englishmen that was our passport. Expressing our wish to see the prince, the court being then full, we were addressed by a gentleman (whom we afterwards found to be Lord Athlone) through whose politeness we gained admission, and were with great affability noticed by the prince. He is short in stature, with much elegance and familiarity in his manner, not unlike our royal family. The princess and her daughter, who is about eighteen, appeared in the room: their dresses were very plain, and they had no other mark of superiority than a train-bearer. So little ceremony is observed in the exterior of the house, that just without the door of the apartment, where the prince was giving audience (which was open), a woman was on her knees scrubbing the staircase.”