Here, as in every inn in Holland, however humble, the guest has always the comfort of a silver fork placed by his side, and a tablecloth of snowy whiteness: in the room where I dined was a glass china cupboard, and every article within it bore shining testimony to its having received a due proportion of diurnal care. Delft is a large but gloomy town, and as silent as a monastery, except in the street immediately leading to the Hague; upon quitting which, no sound was to be heard but that of mops and buckets: narrow, green, stagnant canals divide most of the streets, which are generally, for some little distance before the houses, paved with black and white marble. However, the principal part of the town is handsome, having two spacious streets, with broad canals bordered with trees.
The navigation is interrupted from the Rotterdam entrance to that of the Hague, so that the water within it presents no animating object. In this town turf is principally burnt.
Although the taciturnity of the place would induce a stranger to think its population small, it reckons 13,000 inhabitants, 6000 of whom, since the war, have been reduced to the class of paupers. I met with two or three inhabitants who spoke good English, and expressed in terms of feeling misery, the heavy losses and distresses which they had sustained by a rupture with England; yet, strange as it may appear, they seemed to think well of their new government, and spoke with great esteem of their king, of whom they said they well knew, he felt the impolicy of a war with England as much as any Dutchman, and that he would rejoice at the hour, when the great political events which were passing in other parts of the world, would admit of a renewal of amity and free intercourse with that country; they spoke of the government of the Stadtholder with contempt, and of the Republic with detestation.
I visited the new church, the tower of which is very fine, and of a prodigious altitude. The first object that excited my curiosity, was the tomb of the immortal Grotius, whose remains were brought here, after he expired at Rostock, in 1645, upon his return from the court of Christina, Queen of Sweden, to this, his native city. The tomb erected to his memory is simple, but handsome; it consists of a medallion representing the head of this great man, and a child leaning upon an urn with a torch inverted. The epitaph in latin is elegant, and expressive of the merits and virtues it perpetuates. I regret, upon opening my memorandums, to find my pencil copy of it so effaced as to be unintelligible: of this great civilian and general scholar, Aubere du Marier, who knew him very intimately said, “that he was tall, strong, and a well made man, and had a very agreeable countenance. With all those excellences of body, his mind was still more excellent. He was a man of openness, of veracity, and of honour, and so perfectly virtuous, that throughout his whole life, he made a point of avoiding and of deserting men of bad character, but of seeking the acquaintance of men of worth, and persons distinguished by talents, not only of his own country, but of all Europe, with whom he kept up an epistolary correspondence.”
Grotius displayed great precocity of talents. At the age of fifteen, he accompanied the Dutch ambassador, Barneveldt, into France, and was honoured by several marks of esteem by Henry the Fourth, who at that age discovered extraordinary powers in the mind of Grotius, but could not help expressing his surprise, that the States should send a youth without a beard as an assistant to their ambassador; upon which the stripling astonished the great Henry by this brilliant reply: “Had my country conceived that your Majesty measured ability by the length of the beard, they would have sent in my room a he goat of Norway.”
At seventeen he pleaded as a civilian at the bar in his own country, and was not twenty-four when appointed attorney general. He escaped from the castle of Louvestein, where he was condemned to be imprisoned for life, for the share he had in the affairs which proved the ruin of Barneveldt, in the following interesting manner: his wife, Maria Van Reygersbergen, who was most tenderly attached to him, and a lady of great learning and accomplishments, conciliated the esteem of the wife of the governor of the castle so far as to obtain permission, during the absence of the governor one day, to have removed from her husband’s apartment a large quantity of books, which he had borrowed of a friend at Gorcum: by the address and excellent management of a servant maid, Grotius occupied the place of the books in the trunk; he was safely conveyed from the castle, not without imminent peril of being drilled through the body, in consequence of the porters who carried him down stairs, suspecting that the trunk held a more learned treasure, than that which it was said to contain.
Grotius took refuge in France, which he quitted in consequence of the illiberal conduct of the Cardinal de Richlieu towards him, and accepted of an invitation from that singular princess Christina, queen of Sweden, who was greatly attached to him, and made him her ambassador at Paris, where the Cardinal gave him much trouble, in consequence of his not yielding precedence to him. When Grotius had breathed his last, his countrymen felt contrition for their oppression, and struck a medal in honour of him, on which he is styled, “The Oracle of Delft, the Phœnix of his Country.”
——“This common body,
“Like to a vagabond flag upon the stream,
“Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide.”