Hague, The, an important city of the Netherlands. It lies three miles from the North Sea. It is in line with Delft, Leyden, and Haarlem. It is about sixteen miles from Rotterdam and thirty-three from Amsterdam. It bears much the same relation to the latter city that Versailles does to Paris. Amsterdam is nominally the capital, but the queen resides at the Hague. The foreign ambassadors have their residences here. The States General, the congress of the Netherlands, has its hall of assembly in the Binnenhof, a large, irregular government building. The Hague is a city of palaces and government buildings. A town hall and a royal library containing 300,000 volumes, a municipal museum of pictures and antiquities, and a royal gallery of Dutch paintings, are of interest to visitors and students. The Hague, in size the third city of the Netherlands, in 1905 had a population of 254,504. The prevailing religion is that of the Reformed Church, a form of Presbyterianism. See AMSTERDAM.