their husbands, and that they chose to be without an allowance which
they looked on as an affront. Grotius' father asked permission to see
his son; but was denied. They consented to admit his wife into
Louvestein, but if she came out, she was not to be suffered to go back.
In the sequel it was granted her that she might come abroad twice a
week.

Grotius became now more sensible than ever of the advantages men derive
from a love of the Sciences. Exile and captivity, the greatest evils
that can befal Ministers of ordinary merit, restored to him that
tranquillity to which he had been for some years a stranger. Study
became his business and consolation. From the time he was a prisoner at
the Hague[102], whilst he had the use of pen and ink, he employed
himself in writing a Latin piece on the means of accommodating the
present disputes. This treatise was presented to Prince Maurice; but it
did not mollify the indignation he had conceived against the
Remonstrants. Grotius maintained in it, as he had done often before,
that notwithstanding difference of opinion in some points relating to
grace and predestination, a mutual toleration ought to take place, and
no separation be made.

We have still several of his letters written from Louvestein, which
acquaint us in what manner he spent his time. He gave Vossius an account
of his studies. In the first of those Letters, without date, he observes
to him that he had resumed the study of the Law, which had been long
interrupted by his multiplicity of business; that the rest of his time
he devoted to the study of Morality; which had led him to translate all
the Maxims of the Poets collected by Stobæus, and the fragments of
Menander and Philemon. He likewise purposed to extract from the Comic
and Tragic Authors of Greece what related to Morality, and was omitted