It is like a great fairy drama; the romance of it all is beyond telling. You are carried out of the world of mere personal artistic accomplishment into a universe of mysterious, terrible, delightful, primitive experiences. Gods, dragons, and talking birds seem as natural in this fairy realm as electric cars in Boston. You lose the personality of the artists, the wonderful art of the scene painter, the grandeur of the orchestra, all in the sublimated whole. A case in point,--I never cared to ask the names of the artists, and am now writing for a programme. It merely never struck me that these creatures were anything beside what they stood for in the Wagnerian universe. * * * * * The Hague. August 16. We are pleasantly situated here in a comfortable, old-fashioned hotel. Holland is quite unchanged, the cities as quaint and clean as ever and the sense of familiarity, of being at home here, stronger than ever. We did not have a Dutch ancestor for nothing, did we? We have some pleasant acquaintances here, the family of our friend John Loudon, Secretary of the Netherlands Legation in Rome. We took tea with these kind people yesterday at their miraculously lovely house, a sort of miniature museum filled with superb Dutch art objects, among others the finest collection of old Delft I know, also rare silver, tapestries, wood-carving and other things all Hollandish. After the incongruous hodgepodge some collectors make of their houses, the perfect harmony of this interior was refreshing. M. Loudon, _père_, spoke of Germany with a sort of intense dread. I gathered that the Dutch live in terror of being swallowed alive by their increasingly powerful neighbor. Of all the countries I have seen on this rather extended tour, Germany is the most changed in the last eighteen years. Nassau, which we remember so picturesque and not too tidy, has taken on an impress of military spruceness and precision that makes one think of Berlin, which is the same unsympathetic place, only much larger and even uglier than before. * * * * * 38 Clarges Street, London. August 23. We are delightfully established in London lodgings, very comforting after the long months in hotels. To-day we went to church at St. Giles, Cripplegate, where we heard a good sermon. Yesterday we drove to Windsor and back by coach, a sixty-mile jaunt. The horses were changed eight times. * * * * *