into the city through the Bosch.

"Agreed!" cried one and all--and their skates were off in a twinkling.

The Bosch is a grand park or wood, nearly two miles long, containing the
celebrated House in the Wood--Huis in't Bosch--sometimes used as a royal
residence.

The building, though plain outside for a palace, is elegantly furnished
within and finely frescoed--that is, the walls and ceiling are covered
with groups and designs painted directly upon them while the plaster was
fresh. Some of the rooms are tapestried with Chinese silks, beautifully
embroidered. One contains a number of family portraits, among them a
group of royal children who in time were orphaned by a certain ax, which
figures very frequently in European history. These children were painted
many times by the Dutch artist Van Dyck, who was court painter to their
father, Charles the First of England. Beautiful children they were. What
a deal of trouble the English nation would have been spared had they
been as perfect in heart and soul as they were in form!

The park surrounding the palace is charming, especially in summer, for
flowers and birds make it bright as fairyland. Long rows of magnificent
oaks rear their proud heads, conscious that no profaning hand will ever
bring them low. In fact, the Wood has for ages been held as an almost
sacred spot. Children are never allowed to meddle with its smallest
twig. The ax of the woodman has never resounded there. Even war and riot
have passed it reverently, pausing for a moment in their devastating
way. Philip of Spain, while he ordered Dutchmen to be mowed down by
hundreds, issued a mandate that not a bough of the beautiful Wood should
be touched. And once, when in a time of great necessity the State was
about to sacrifice it to assist in filling a nearly exhausted treasury,
the people rushed to the rescue, and nobly contributed the required
amount rather than that the Bosch should fall.

What wonder, then, that the oaks have a grand, fearless air? Birds from
all Holland have told them how, elsewhere, trees are cropped and bobbed
into shape--but THEY are untouched. Year after year they expand in
unclipped luxuriance and beauty; their wide-spreading foliage, alive
with song, casts a cool shade over lawn and pathway or bows to its image
in the sunny ponds.

Meanwhile, as if to reward the citizens for allowing her to have her way
for once, Nature departs from the invariable level, wearing gracefully
the or