rench romantic school is represented here, brought
together by a collector with a sure eye. No visitor to The Hague who
cares anything for painting should miss it; and indeed no visitor
who cares nothing for painting should miss it, for it may lure him
to wiser ways.

The Binnenhof is a mass of medieval and later buildings extending
along the south side of the Vyver, which was indeed once a part of
its moat. The most attractive view of it is from the north side of the
Vyver, with the long broken line of roof and gable and turret reflected
in the water. The nucleus of the Binnenhof was the castle or palace of
William II., Count of Holland in the thirteenth century--also Emperor
of Germany and father of Florence V., who built the great hall of the
knights (into which, however, one may penetrate only on Thursdays),
and whose tomb we shall see in Alkmaar church. The Stadtholders made
the Binnenhof their headquarters; but the present Royal Palace is half
a mile north-west of it. Other buildings have been added from time to
time, and the trams are now allowed to rush through with their bells
jangling the while. The desecration is not so glaring as at Utrecht,
but it seems thoroughly wrong--as though we were to permit a line to
traverse Dean's Yard at Westminster. A more appropriate sanction is
that extended to one or two dealers in old books and prints who have
their stalls in the Binnenhof's cloisters.

It was in the Binnenhof that the scaffold stood on which John van
Barneveldt was beheaded in 1619, the almost inevitable result of his
long period of differences with the Stadtholder Maurice, son of William
the Silent. His arrest, as we have seen, followed the Synod of Dort,
Grotius being also removed by force. Barneveldt's imprisonment,
trial and execution resemble Spanish methods of injustice more
closely than one likes to think. I quote Davies' fine account of
the old statesman's last moments: "Leaning on his staff, and with
his servant on the other side to support his steps, grown feeble
with age, Barneveldt walked composedly to the place of execution,
prepared before the great saloon of the court-house. If, as it is not
improbable, at the approach of death in the midst of life and health,
when the intellect is in full vigour, and every nerve, sense and fibre
is strung to the highest pitch of tension, a foretaste of that which
is to come is sometimes given to man, and his over-wrought mind is
enabled to grasp at one sin