when he was eleven; at sixteen he was practising as a lawyer at
The Hague. This is D. Goslings' translation of the inscription on
his tomb:--

_Sacred to Hugo Grotius_

The Wonder of Europe, the sole astonishment of the learned world,
the splendid work of nature surpassing itself, the summit of genius,
the image of virtue, the ornament raised above mankind, to whom the
defended honour of true religion gave cedars from the top of Lebanon,
whom Mars adorned with laurels and Pallas with olive branches, when
he had published the right of war and peace: whom the Thames and
the Seine regarded as the wonder of the Dutch, and whom the court
of Sweden took in its service: Here lies _Grotius_. Shun this tomb,
ye who do not burn with love of the Muses and your country.

Grotius can hardly have burned with love of the sense of justice of
his own country, for reasons with which we are familiar. His sentence
of life-long imprisonment, passed by Prince Maurice of Orange, who lies
hard by in the same church, was passed in 1618. His escape in the chest
(like General Monk in _Twenty Years After_) was his last deed on Dutch
soil. Thenceforward he lived in Paris and Sweden, England and Germany,
writing his _De Jure Belli et Pacis_ and other works. He died in 1645,
when Holland claimed him again, as Oxford has claimed Shelley.

The principal tomb in the Old Church of Delft is that of Admiral Tromp,
the Dutch Nelson. While quite a child he was at sea with his father
off the coast of Guinea when an English cruiser captured the vessel
and made him a cabin boy. Tromp, if he felt any resentment, certainly
lived to pay it back, for he was our victor in thirty-three naval