When I was first at The Hague, seven years ago, I stayed not, as on my last visit, at the Oude Doelen, which is the most comfortable hotel in Holland, but at a more retired hostelry.  It was spacious and antiquated, with large empty rooms, and cool passages, and an air of decay over all.  Servants one never saw, nor any waiter proper; one’s every need was carried out by a very small and very enthusiastic boy.  “Is the hroom good, sare?” he asked, as he flung open the door of the bedroom with a superb flourish.  “Is the sham good, sare?” he asked as he laid a pot of preserve on the table.  He was the landlady’s son or grandson, and a better boy never lived, but his part, for all his spirit and good humour, was a tragic one.  For the greatest misfortune that can come upon an hotel-keeper had crushed this house:  Baedeker had excised their star!

The landlady moved in the background, a disconsolate figure with a grievance.  She waylaid us as we went out and as we came in.  Was it not a good hotel?  Was not the management excellent?  Had we any complaints?  And yet—­see—­once she had a star and now it was gone.  Could we not help to regain it?  Here was the secret of the grandson’s splendid zeal.  The little fellow was fighting to hitch the old hotel to a star once more, as Emerson had bidden.

Alas, it was in vain; for that was seven years ago, and I see that Baedeker still withholds the distinction.  What a variety of misfortune this little world holds!  While some of us are indulging our right to be unhappy over a thousand trivial matters, such as illness and disillusion, there are inn-keepers on the Continent who are staggering and struggling under real blows.

I wondered if it were better to have had a star and lost it, than never to have had a star at all.  But I did not ask.  The old lady’s grief was too poignant, her mind too practical, for such questions.

S’Gravenhage or Den Haag, or The Hague as we call it, being the seat of the court, is at once the most civilised and most expensive of the Dutch cities.  But it is not conspicuously Dutch, and is interesting rather for its pictures and for its score of historic buildings about the Vyver than for itself.  Take away the Vyver and its surrounding treasures and a not very noteworthy European town would remain.

And yet to say so hardly does justice to this city, for it has a character of its own that renders it unique:  cosmopolitan and elegant; catholic in its tastes; indulgent to strangers; aristocratic; well-spaced and well built; above all things, bland.

And the Vyver is a jewel set in its midst, beautiful by day and beautiful by night, with fascinating reflections in it at both times, and a special gift for the transmission of bells in a country where bells are really honoured.  On its north side is the Vyverberg with pleasant trees and a row of spacious and perfectly self-composed white houses, one of which, at the corner, has in its windows the most exquisite long lace curtains in this country of exquisite long lace curtains.