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136 to this place, is severely felt by numbers. Before the revolution, the Hague not only contained its own princes of the house of Orange, but several petty princes of the German empire, who spent here the revenues which accrued to them from their territories. These personages are all fled, and the same frugality and simplicity of manners begin to prevail at the Hague, which distinguish other parts of Holland, to the utter ruin of all those whose livelihood depended on the superfluous wants of the great. As the seat of the executive government, and of the representative bodies, the Hague enjoys advantages which other towns of the republic do not possess; but these advantages are vastly inferior to the benefits which it derived from the stadtholder and his court, and most persons, even republicans, sorrowfully complain of its striking and rapid decay. Respectable families, which before the arrival of the French lived in elegant houses cheerfully situated, now retire to lodgings, or inhabit narrow, uncomfortable streets where house-