But I am not sure that the Diaz (who began by being an old master) is not the more exquisite picture.

For the rest, there are other Corots, among them one of his black night pieces; a little village scene by Troyon; some apples by Courbet, in the grandest manner surely in which apples ever were painted; a Monticelli; a scene of hills by Georges Michel which makes one wish he had painted the Sussex Downs; a beautiful chalk drawing by Millet; some vast silent Daubignys; a few Mauves; a very interesting early James Maris in the manner of Peter de Hooch, and a superb later James Maris—­wet sand and a windy sky.

The flower of the French 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