us, Voetius, Coecaeus, Bogerman
and Uyttenbogaert. Not all these men had a direct connection with
Leyden, for the success which attended the creation of the academy in
that town quickly led to the erection of similar institutions elsewhere.
Universities were founded at Franeker, 1584; Groningen, 1614; Amsterdam,
1632; Utrecht, 1636; and Harderwijk, 1646. These had not the same
attraction as Leyden for foreigners, but they quickly became, one and
all, centres for the diffusion of that high level of general culture
which was the distinguishing mark of the 17th century Netherlands.

All the writers, whose names have just been mentioned, used Latin almost
exclusively as their instrument of expression. But one name, the most
renowned of them all, has been omitted, because through political
circumstances he was compelled to spend the greater part of his life in
banishment from his native land. Hugo Grotius (Huig van Groot), after
his escape from the castle of Loevestein in 1621, though he remained
through life a true patriot, never could be induced to accept a pardon,
which implied an admission of guilt in himself or in Oldenbarneveldt. So
the man, who was known to have been the actual writer of the Advocate's
_Justification_, continued to live in straitened circumstances at Paris,
until Oxenstierna appointed him Swedish ambassador at the French
court. This post he held for eleven years. Of his extraordinary ability,
and of the variety and range of his knowledge, it is not possible to
speak without seeming exaggeration. Grotius was in his own time styled
"the wonder of the world"; he certainly stands intellectually as one of
the very foremost men the Dutch race has produced. Scholar, jurist,
theologian, philosopher, historian, poet, diplomatist, letter-writer, he
excelled in almost every branch of knowledge and made himself a master
of whatever subject he took in hand. For the student of International
Law the treatise of Grotius, _De Jure belli et pacis_, still remains the
text-book on which the later superstructure has been reared. His _Mare
liberum_, written expressly to controvert the Portuguese claim of an
exclusive right to trade and navigate in the Indian Ocean, excited much
attention in Europe, and was taken by James I to be an attack on the
oft-asserted _dominium maris_ of the English crown in the narrow seas.
It led the king to issue a proclamation forbidding foreigners to fish in
British waters (May, 1609). Selden's