Green meadows spotted with buttercups and dandelions, flat and low, lower than the canals with which the country is intersected, and which bring in between them, at high tide, the waters of the distant sea, stretched on every side. They were striped with long lines of water which is constantly pumped out by the windmills, and sent with the ebb tide through the canals to the ocean. Herds of cattle were feeding among the bright verdure. From time to time, we passed some pleasant country-seat, the walls bright with paint, and the grounds surrounded by a ditch, call it a moat if you please, the surface of which was green with duck-weed. But within this watery inclosure, were little artificial elevations covered with a closely-shaven turf, and plantations of shrubbery, and in the more extensive and ostentatious of them, were what might be called groves and forests. Before one of these houses was a fountain with figures, mouths of lions and other animals, gushing profusely with water, which must have been pumped up for the purpose, into a reservoir, by one of the windmills. Passing through Schiedam, still famous for its gin, and Delft, once famous for its crockery, we reached in a couple of hours the Hague, the cleanest of cities, paved with yellow brick, and as full of canals as Rotterdam. I called on an old acquaintance, who received me with a warm embrace and a kiss on each cheek. He was in his morning-gown, which he immediately exchanged for an elegant frock coat of the latest Parisian cut, and took us to see Baron Vorstolk's collection of pictures, which contains some beautiful things by the Flemish artists, and next, to the public collection called the Museum. From this we drove to the Chateau du Bois, a residence of the Dutch Stadtholders two hundred years ago, when Holland was a republic, and a powerful and formidable one. It is pleasantly situated in the edge of a wood, which is said to be part of an original forest of the country. I could believe this, for here the soil rises above the marshy level of Holland, and trees of various kinds grow irregularly intermingled, as in the natural woods of our own country. The Chateau du Bois is principally remarkable for a large room with a dome, the interior of which is covered with large paintings by Rubens, Jordaens, and other artists.