Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/77

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THE BATAVIAN REPUBLIC
65

the landscape. Directly before him the lofty edifices of the Hague raise the expectations of the traveller, and the wood, as it is emphatically called, on the right of the town, presents a scene of forest grandeur.

We alighted at the Parliament of England, a respectable hotel in the Hague, which, before the interruption of our intercourse with Holland, was much frequented by British families of distinction. The accommodations here are good, and the master and servants politely attentive, though not equal to what fame reports of them. The trade of innkeepers has declined in the same proportion as the other branches of Dutch commerce; and therefore the solution is easy, why the hotel is inferior to the reputation which it bears. The person who formerly conducted the Parliament of England, with so much honour to himself and satisfaction to his guests, was an Englishman; but he retired from business shortly after the expulsion of the stadtholder, and the consequent removal of British subjects from the Hague. His successor, with every possible