assailed
the purity of his heart or integrity of his character. He had not yet
written the great work on the 'Rights of War and Peace', which was to
make an epoch in the history of civilization and to be the foundation of
a new science, but the materials lay already in the ample storehouse of
his memory and his brain.

Possessed of singular personal beauty--which the masterly portraits of
Miereveld attest to the present day--tall, brown-haired;
straight-featured, with a delicate aquiline nose and piercing dark blue
eyes, he was also athletic of frame and a proficient in manly exercises.
This was the statesman and the scholar, of whom it is difficult to speak
but in terms of affectionate but not exaggerated eulogy, and for whom the
Republic of the Netherlands could now find no better use than to shut him
up in the grim fortress of Loevestein for the remainder of his days. A
commonwealth must have deemed itself rich in men which, after cutting off
the head of Barneveld, could afford to bury alive Hugo Grotius.

His deportment in prison was a magnificent moral lesson. Shut up in a
kind of cage consisting of a bedroom and a study, he was debarred from
physical exercise, so necessary for his mental and bodily health. Not
choosing for the gratification of Lieutenant Deventer to indulge in weak
complaints, he procured a huge top, which he employed himself in whipping
several hours a day; while for intellectual employment he plunged once
more into those classical, juridical, and theological studies which had
always employed his leisure hours from childhood upwards.

It had been forbidden by the States-General to sell his likeness in the
shops. The copper plates on which they had been engraved had as far as
possible been destroyed.

The wish of the government, especially of his judges, was that his name
and memory should die at once and for ever. They were not destined to be
successful, for it would be equally difficult to-day to find an educated
man in Christendom ignorant of the name of Hugo Grotius, or acquainted
with that of a single one of his judges.

And his friends had not forgotten him as he lay there living in his tomb.
Especially the learned Scriverius, Vossius, and other professors, were
permitted to correspond with him at intervals on literary subjects, the
letters being subjected to preliminary inspection. Scriverius sent him
many books from his well-stocked library, de Groot's own books and papers
having been