ter Gerard's
cruel shots. "Three balls," says Motley, "entered his body, one of
which, passing quite through him, struck with violence against the
wall beyond. The Prince exclaimed in French, as he felt the wound,
'O my God, have mercy upon my soul! O my God, have mercy upon this
poor people!'

"These were the last words he ever spoke, save that when his sister,
Catherine of Schwartzburgh, immediately afterwards asked him if he
commended his soul to Jesus Christ, he faintly answered, 'Yes'."

Never has the pistol done worse work. The Prince was only fifty-one;
he was full of vigour; his character had never been stronger, his
wisdom never more mature. Had he lived a few years longer the country
would have been saved years of war and misery.

One may stand to-day exactly where the Prince stood when he was
shot. The mark of a bullet in the wall is still shown. The dining-room,
from which he had come, now contains a collection of relics of his
great career.

Let us return to the New Church, past the statue of Grotius in
the great square, in order to look again at that philosopher's
memorial. Grotius, who was born at Delft, was extraordinarily
precocious. He went to Leyden University and studied under Scaliger
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 Paci