And a wonder it is to me that some of these “old master” centers do not consider us Americans the most appreciative of art of any people in the world. They must think that we are picture and cathedral crazy--and I have no doubt they do, and snicker up their sleeves in lieu of a less ill-mannered outburst. Granted that in itself it is an education to see the famous pictures--I admit that there are other things in the world just as wonderful as old paintings, many of which are of notoriously poor draughtsmanship but have become famous merely from the fact that the paint still retains its luster after three hundred and some years. We pay too little attention to the life of the cities and the traits of their peoples as they are found to-day. But I digress. This is not a lecture on the marvels or fallacies of art. The site of The Hague was originally a hunting-park owned and operated by the Counts of Holland who used to come over frequently from Haarlem to hunt their deer. From this fact it derived its Dutch nomenclature, ’S Graven Hage, meaning “the Count’s inclosure.” The allurements of the place must have been to the detriment of official business in Haarlem, for they felled most of the trees with which it was overgrown and transferred thither the seat of government about the middle of the thirteenth century. Beginning with Maurice of Nassau in 1593, it became the official residence of the _stadtholder_ of the Republic. Having been thus honored as the capital of Dutch statesmanship in the early days, the main historical curiosity in The Hague is the Binnenhof, a group of ancient buildings where the _stadtholders_ lived and worked and had their being and tried to dissolve frequent plots for their own extermination. Here William II, Count of Holland and afterward elected Emperor of Germany, built a castle in 1250, which, forty years later, was enlarged and fitted up for a permanent residence by his son, Floris V. At the east of the Binnenhof stands the old gabled and turreted Hall of the Knights, erected at the time of Floris and recently restored and put into use for legislative purposes.