CHAPTER IV
CHRISTIAN EUROPE

PART I
EUROPEAN EUROPE

The route of the Average Tourist being determined by the considerations above-mentioned, he was naturally directed to those countries whose situation enabled them to influence the course of events in his fatherland, whose development and conditions contained the most pertinent lessons for him as a man and as a statesman, and whose climate, accessibility, and inhabitants were such as hindered travellers least. These countries were: Italy, France, the United Provinces (i. e., Holland), the Empire, the Spanish Netherlands (corresponding to Belgium), England, Poland. This order is that in which they would probably have appeared to arrange themselves according to their importance for the purposes under consideration. The omission of England in the chapter heading is due, of course, to Evelyn having started thence; of the Empire and Poland, to the date at which he is writing, near the close of the Thirty Years' War; a date which, while within the period with which this book has to deal, is later by nearly half a century than the central date, 1600, to which all its undated statements should be taken as referring.

Whatever criticism might have been passed on this order of importance by this or that adviser, not one would have been found to dispute the preëminence of Italy. Whereas now there is no form of human effort in which the inhabitants of Italy have not been equalled or surpassed, it seemed then as if there had never been any in which they had been surpassed and very few in which they had been equalled. So far as Art and antiquities go, there will be no need to persuade anybody of the likelihood of that; nor probably, with regard to venerableness of religion or romance of history. But the very easiness of imagining the supremacy which would have been conceded Italy on these points tends to close the enquiry into the causes of its hold on men in times gone by, and consequently to obscure the fact that Italy then not only stood for all that Italy stands for now, but also in the place, or rather, places, now occupied by the most advanced States in their most advanced aspects; for everything, in fact, that made for progress on the lines considered most feasible or probable at the moment; for progress, not only in culture, but in commerce and commercial methods, in politics, in the science of war, in up-to-date handicraft, and, especially, in worldly wisdom. Even a baby-food was assured of greater respect if made from an Italian recipe, such as the paste made of bread-crumbs, wheat-meal, and olive-oil, of which De Thou nearly died. In short, if the value of Italy as the colonizer of Europe in regard to mental development belonged by this time to the past rather than to the present, its reputation as such must not be ante-dated, as is generally done, and ascribed to the age when it most thoroughly deserved that reputation. Here, on the contrary, as usually, merit and credit are not contemporary.

And there was plenty to deceive those who did not look far below the surface. In discussing politics the newest set-phrases would be those brought into use by Italian writers; "balance of power," "reason of state," etc.; the word "status" itself, as a substitute for "Respublica," was both a sign of the times and of Italian influence.[39] So with commercial terms, we find, for instance, the word "provvisione" (commission) being used as late as 1648,[40] by an Englishman who had never been to Italy, while the control of Italy over one of the later forms of the Renascence, that of the art of gardening, is indicated by the introduction of the word "florist" from the Italian during the seventeenth century. The only modern author, moreover, whose acquaintance a European schoolboy was certain to make, was the Italian versifier whom Shakespeare calls "good old Mantuan," and even if we look at things from to-day's standpoint the most remarkable professorship of the period would surely be accounted that of Galileo at Padua, 1592-1610. In another respect, too, connected with education, the relative maturity and crudeness of civilisation south and north of the Alps is even more apparent to-day than it was then. The "Trans-alpine" shared more or less Erasmus' belief in the power of words as a means of education, whereas in Italy, and in Italy alone, was it insisted that the influence of environment, personal and physical, is the factor compared to which all else is of but little account. The first theory is abandoned now by all who can afford to do so, the second is that of the best effort of to-day.[41]

As for the technique of war, more than half-way through the seventeenth century, when Louis XIV wanted the very best available talent to design the completion of the Louvre, it was to Rome that he sent, and the artist, Bernini, is recorded[42] as saying, to allay jealousy, that there was no need for Frenchmen to be ashamed of an Italian being called in for this purpose, seeing that in the kind of knowledge in which they excelled all Europe, that of war, their teachers were still Italians. And the modernity of the latter's reputation for supremacy in military knowledge is thrown into relief by a remark of Bertrandon de la Brocquière, writing in 1433, taken in conjunction with the above. The latter was a clear-headed Fleming of wide experience who, when drawing up a plan for the right composition of an army which should suffice to drive the Turks back, only mentions French, English, and German soldiers.

As regards applied science, again, we find Evelyn writing of the harbour-works at Genoa, "of all the wonders of Italy, for the art and nature of the design, nothing parallels this." Now Evelyn was certainly not a man to underrate the rest of the wonders of Italy. As for comparisons outside of Italy, all Europe had by his time settled down to compete in the application of science to every-day life. And as to the products of the soil, is it not probable that if, nowadays, Europeans left the soil to take care of itself, and the day-labourer to take care of the seed and the preparation of the product, Italy would regain the first place as a producer of luxuries?

Such points as these, just a few that have chanced to suggest themselves in the course of reading for other purposes, are merely put forward as typical of the relations existing between Italy and the rest of Europe; the Italians themselves admitted their own superiority by the slightly contemptuous meaning that attached itself to their word "Transalpini," and very rare is it to find one of these "Transalpini" taking the view that Sir Philip Sidney and Fynes Moryson did, that the first characteristic of Italy was pretentiousness. On the contrary, it was assumed that little but experience could be so easily, or so satisfactorily, acquired elsewhere. Diverse forms of government, at least, could not be met with elsewhere in the same variety within such narrow limits. The south was what they termed a "province," i. e., a dependency held down by force, belonging to Spain; so, too, was Milan, with its surroundings. In the centre was a monarch, the Pope, who was both elected and "absolute," a term which had a specialised meaning, that of power unlimited except by the extent to which the holder made himself disliked. Further north were free cities, Lucca, Genoa; six hereditary principalities, Tuscany, Mantua, Urbino, Savoy, Modena, Parma; and lastly, the Republic of Venice with its miniature empire in Lombardy. And concerning Venice, there is this to be noted, that it was exhibiting solidity combined with elasticity to a degree all the more astonishing in "an impossible city in an impossible place"; which gave it a position not unlike that of England to-day, namely, that peculiarities of its "constitution" received an even greater degree of respect than they were entitled to and tended to be imitated by constitution-formulators of the period who expected to reproduce what had been achieved by geography and a national temperament, by means of reproducing some of the formulas that the latter had adopted. All of which was of great interest to the Average Tourist; and in consequence, if you happen to be reading one of his accounts of a tour, at the first mention of the word "Doge," skip twelve pages.

What remains to be seen concerning Italy is—what were the details that mainly occupied the foreigner as student there. In which connection the chief fact to be noted is that his stopping-places were invariably towns; and this not in Italy only, but throughout Europe. As regards the Average Tourist, this is fully accounted for by the objects he set before himself, but it is equally true of all. Bathing-places excepted, the only holiday resorts lay in the very last places where we should think of looking for them—in the suburbs. The Riviera, for instance, was no spot to delay in when Mohammedan pirates were forever coasting along in search of Christian slaves; and so on. But the essential explanation is to be sought in a census of Europe. The population of London exceeds that of most sixteenth-century States, and there are London suburbs which house more than any but the biggest sixteenth-century cities. Many villages consisted of no more than three or four houses; and even near Paris, of six or seven or eight; in Spain one might journey eight leagues without seeing a house at all. Whereas, therefore, the difficulty, and the pleasure, of a modern tour consists in escaping from people, the difficulty, and the safety, of all tourists in 1600 lay in reaching them.

Crossing the Alps, then, and making for the towns, one came, say, upon Turin; not a town that would detain one, but a point of the parting of the ways. Hence to Rome, the direct way lay through Genoa; a second viâ Milan and Bologna, a day's journey longer but yielding the advantage of seeing those two cities; while the third way, the longest but most comfortable and no more expensive, lay down the Po to Ferrara, thence to Venice, thence by sea to Ancona, by land to Loreto, and so to Rome. The two former routes converged at Florence. Of these two the longer would be chosen either going or returning. Milan must no more be missed than Rome. It was the city of all Europe on which the question of peace and war permanently depended; being the key to the most debateable district. And as such, it may be imagined what the castle was then from what it is even in its present state as a sort of museum of military architecture. Then it was alive with the finest soldiers of the age, Spaniards; a small town, complete in itself, with rows of shops and five market-places. And the city itself was recognised as unsurpassed as a school both for the accomplishments that befitted a gentleman and for craftsmanship; for everything, in fact, that made life possible or pleasant. Yet Bologna had the advantage of it in one respect, in possessing a University; to matriculate in an Italian university continued an inexpressible honour to the "Transalpini," evident though it was that the merest smattering of book-knowledge was sufficient to pass; and even though the Italian said openly, "We take the fees, and send back an ass in a doctor's gown." Florence again, had its own supremacy; the most attractive town in the district where the best Italian was supposed to be spoken. Siena was preferred by purists for language, but the slight distinction was outweighed by just those charms which have not been impaired by age. One more has indeed been added that might be expected to have existed then, but did not; what Ben Jonson wrote in "Volpone" in summing up the qualities of the poets of Italy and eulogising Guarini.

was but an echo of the Italians' own opinion. "Like Dante's 'Inferno' which no man understandeth" was a Venetian Senator's description of Henry IV's policy in 1606.[43]

Assuming the third route to be the one chosen, there was Ferrara to pass, but not to stay at when Venice was almost in sight—Venice in 1600! to have been a witness of that would make it well worth while to have been dead for the past three hundred years. The essence of the change is best expressed in the words of Mr. L. P. Smith in his "Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton," when he speaks of it as "a shell on the shores of the Adriatic deserted by the wonderful organism that once inhabited it." Outward and visible signs of the vividness and breadth of its life were two in particular; the infinite variety and number of persons and nationalities that filled its streets with colour and contrast and a sense of new worlds and of mystery in the midst of commerce; and secondly, the Arsenal. In all Europe there was not such another organisation as the Arsenal; not one so completely prepared with everything that went to the fitting out of a fleet, and very few so well able to fit out an army. Villamont was shown twenty-five great galleasses and eighty-five galleys, all of them so new that they had not been out to sea. Probably, also, its managers were the greatest direct employers of labour in Christendom; 2880 is one of the more moderate estimates of those permanently at work, including the 200 old women always mending sails, a number increased to 700 at times; and all these employees were assured of a pension from the State when past work, an otherwise unheard-of custom then, in practice, at least. It had its place, too, in the tourist's mythology; one after another repeating the tale how when Henry III of France visited Venice, a galley was built and three cannon turned out while he was at dinner.

Yet Montaigne has something to say about Venice that cancels all the intervening years and changes, and brings him into touch with us. He went his way towards it with the highest expectations, explored it eagerly, recollected it with the keenest pleasure: yet at the end of his second day there his feeling was one of disappointment. It may be taken as characteristic that he alone should experience then what seems more appropriate to the present; more probably, other visitors shared it but were too much subject to convention to say so; or, perhaps, re-writing their experiences later at home, as they generally did, they record their later thought only, whereas Montaigne left his unrevised and unashamed. This explanation seems the more reasonable inasmuch as the causes of the feeling had already come into being. On the surface the sight rested satisfied, while the imagination remained as hungry as ever. In a country, France, for instance, the tourist always had a consciousness of towns and districts unseen, all of which had contributed to the past, for evidence of the existence of which the imagination looks, however unconsciously; but after two days in Venice, all that is important and visible may seem to have been seen; no suggestion of anything beyond, not even the ruins of a half-buried city, as at Rome. It is true it was clear then that the word "Venice" meant an Empire as well as a city, though by the time the tourist had reached the city, he had passed through the conquests, barring an island or two in the Levant which the Turks were in course of subtracting. Yet the third meaning of the name was as dim to him as both the second and the third are to most of us, that of the source of an Empire, the whole collection of islands in the lagoons, whose larger life had already been drained away into the central settlement, but where Venice and its history were equally discoverable—but not in two days.

Another similarity between Venice of old and of to-day lies in the fact that the gondoliers knew much better than the visitors whither the latter wanted to go and took them there, with, or against, orders; only with this difference, that then it was always to the house of the courtesan in whose pay he was.

When the tourist had released himself and was proceeding on his way to Rome there were the beacons dotted along the coast for him to notice, beacons for signalling the sighting of a Turk or corsair vessel from south to north in a few hours. Ravenna received little notice, Rimini less, but Ancona was kept in the memory by one of those rhymes characteristic of the contemporary guide-book.

And then Loreto. Here it must be remembered, first of all, that it was unpardonable to ask for a meal before visiting the "Santa Casa." The town was little more than one long street, well fortified by reason of the treasure that the offerings represented. Bassompierre relates in his memoirs how he was invited to be one of the witnesses at the quarterly offering of the poor-box one Christmas; the contents amounted to 6000 crowns (in our money about £7500); this for one quarter only. Many men, and towns too, were represented by models of themselves in solid silver. As to which votive offerings Montaigne makes an assertion, unconfirmed by any one else but with this in its favour, that no tourist but himself gives any details concerning a valuable offering from himself made at Loreto. He says that the craftsmen refuse to take any payment for such articles beyond the cost of the materials. It seems incredible that a town which had been the resort of pilgrims for more than two centuries should not have become demoralised, but Montaigne adds that the officials refused tips, or received them unwillingly; and certainly no one complains of extortion.

If the tourist was lucky enough to see a shipload of pilgrims arriving from the farther coast of the Adriatic, it would be worth while to stay and watch, for as soon as Loreto came in sight they rose and cried out without ceasing from that moment until they reached the "Santa Casa," beseeching the Madonna to return to Fiume, where, once upon a time, so the tale ran, her house had stood. Leaving Loreto, not forgetting, of course, to wear the pilgrim's badge peculiar to the shrine—a leaden image of Our Lady surmounted by three porcupine quills fastened together with a silk thread, a tiny flag on each quill—leaving Loreto, then, a détour was often made to visit Assisi, joining the main road again at Spoleto. And so to Rome, where the new arrival, if a Roman Catholic, should first make his way to the Scale Sante to return thanks for his preservation during the past journey; where, too, at his departure, he should pray for assistance on the one to come.

It made considerable difference to his recollections of Rome what date it was within this period that he arrived. If at the beginning, he would have found St. Peter's half-finished and the interior in a state better suited to a pig-sty; and the rest of the city to match; the most confident Protestant would be gratified to find himself scandalised beyond expectation. By 1601 St. Peter's was practically in all its glory, the city unsurpassed in its care for the needy and sick, and of average morality. In the interval, too, the catacombs had been discovered, and though Bosio, the explorer of them, did not publish the results of his explorations till 1632 they became more accessible meanwhile; continuing, however, to be regarded as isolated "crypts." It was his book "Roma Sotterranea" that first caused them to be considered collectively; and it was under that name that Evelyn paid his visit to them in 1645, the first of these tourists to make anything that can be called an excursion among them. He entered through a burrow in a cornfield two miles from the city, so small that he had to crawl on his stomach for the first twenty paces. But the main feature of the Rome of 1600 was still its power. Not simply influence in the present as a result of power in the past, but the strength of age, middle-age, and youth existing in unison. To begin with, their reverence for Ancient Rome was greater than ours; an effect partly of their theory of history, partly of the narrower limits of their acquaintance with the materials of history. For the former cause, it was bound to be an axiom of history as long as the Bible remained authoritative as a statement of historical fact, that mankind had proceeded from good to bad, and from bad to worse, as time had advanced. And whatever, in the thought of the age, tended to shake this view, was held in check by the discoveries, in different, previously unexplored, parts of the world, of communities which seemed to be possessed at once of a higher morality and also of a more primitive civilisation, than the European. It is probably impossible for us to realise the alteration that the theory of evolution has introduced into current ideas about history.

For the second cause, the greatness of the Roman Empire appeared the greater for their having so little with which to compare it. The empire of the Ottomans had, it is true, by now eclipsed it; but Spain's was a vague wilderness, inhabited by savages; the Persian of old they only knew through the doctored accounts of the Latin writers; and of the overwhelming antiquity and extent of the Chinese they had no real knowledge at all. All, the Turkish excepted, that were not shadowy to them, were what Rome had obliterated, the moral effect of which, associated, as it must needs be, with the name of the city, endured as the chief asset of the Papal power. If any one then had taken Gibbon's view, that the remains of the Roman Empire were approaching dissolution, it would only have been because he thought that the end of the world was equally near. And this unbroken continuity of power did not merely exist, but was alive with fresh life. Nothing had replaced Rome; there was nothing to replace it; there was no need to replace it, since there was nothing effete nor slack about it, however much corruption was patent to the "Reformed."

The relations between visitors who were "Reformed" and Rome is another interesting feature of the tourist-life of the time when both were militant and a large proportion of tourists anti-Catholic. Much depended on the reigning Pope. In the time of Sixtus V (1585-90) Protestants came in fear, lived in disguise, and sought protection; Englishmen from Cardinal Allen, who readily granted it for a few days, to enable them to see the antiquities. Clement VIII (1592-1605) was much more lenient, yet Moryson thought it advisable even then to pass for a Frenchman, and to safeguard himself through Cardinal Allen, as well; also to leave before Easter, when there was a house-to-house visitation to enquire if all were communicants. Precautions, on the other hand, might be overdone. It was all very well to make a practice, as one did, of going through a church on the way to his morning drink, in case spies were about, but to tell one's host, as a certain German did, on returning home from an afternoon walk, that he had just been to mass, when all the masses were said in the morning, was going too far! And conforming to custom had its own dangers, too, when it formed a habit, as Moryson found, who, on entering a church at Geneva, reached out his hand towards the poor-box in mistake for the holy-water stoop to which he had accustomed himself; all the more embarrassing a mistake for his being in the company of Theodore Beza.

Gregory XV (1621-3)—to return to the Popes—forbade even the other princes of Italy to admit any but Roman Catholics to their dominions; and there were, besides, the already-mentioned prohibitions from the authorities at home. The state of affairs in general may be taken as that suggested by the localisation of Shakespeare's plays. Two-thirds of his scenes are laid abroad, in Italy more frequently than elsewhere outside England: yet his contemporary Italy is practically always the North, the South being reserved for the "classical" period. Nevertheless, it may safely be assumed that the danger was not quite so great as the fear, and that where the former was incurred, the sufferer had only himself to blame. Whether or no the high officials at Rome were faulty in dogma or in virtue, they were usually both men of the world and gentlemen. Montaigne's belongings, for example, provided the searchers with plenty of material for a charge of heresy, but a short conversation overcame all difficulties. And one William Davis, an English sailor[44] who fell ill at Rome in 1598, found by experience that a Protestant who was civil would be cared for in a hospital free and given food and money on leaving. The more usual kind of behaviour has already been illustrated; only it must not be imagined that the incautiousness and incivility which turned the Protestant into a martyr were less conspicuous among other sects. By the law of Geneva a three-days stay was permitted to travellers of every creed. The poet-philosopher, Giordano Bruno, and the Jesuit missionary, Parsons, both rested there; their zeal prescribed the extremes of controversial outrage in return for tolerance and courtesy.

But Rome and its associations have had more than their share of attention. Imagine, then, the traveller started on the invariable excursion to Naples, the equal of Milan as a finishing school, and one of the few cities with underground drainage. Some, but not many, might go on to Sicily; to Syracuse for the feast of Santa Lucia, for choice. But what with robbers and corsair-raids, there was no travelling there without a strong guard, and the towns were so unsafe that Messina seems to have been the first of European towns to evolve a combined bank and safe-deposit under municipal guarantee; established by 1611, when Sandys noticed it. Those who did reach Sicily usually visited Malta as well; small boats with five rowers left about two hours before sunset, and if no Turkish sail was sighted, went on, reaching Malta about dawn.

But the foregoing presupposes the Mont-Cenis route into Italy, and leaves out three towns which must be included: Padua, Verona, and Bergamo. Padua had its university, the most-visited in Europe; Verona, its relics of Roman times, which commanded an attention that they now have to share with the romantic aspects of mediæval history, romance that sixteenth-century people were not inclined to be attracted by, having too first-hand an acquaintance with feuds to look at their picturesque side. Moreover, the visible remains of these feuds, here and in every Italian city, showed a ludicrous side, for in so far as they did not take the form of assassination by the foulest means, they consisted in the two parties of retainers parading the town, armed with an absurd completeness, each one confining itself to certain quarters of the town by tacit agreement in order to render collisions impossible. The habits dramatised in the first scene of "Romeo and Juliet" are those of Londoners, in so far as they are at all contemporary. The third town, Bergamo, thousands pass by now, year by year, within a few miles, never knowing what they miss by not stopping, but then it lay on the north-and-south road as much as any town in Italy, and not even the Frankfort fair surpassed that of Bergamo, August 25 and the following week, when lucky was he who could find sleeping-room in a stable.

Yet however complete was the outfit obtainable across the Alps, there remained other countries which were factors in politics; and which possessed, moreover, histories, courts, universities, and men of learning; fewer temptations, possibly, and more "true religion." Of these France was the one the most easily accessible to a greater number. As to its boundaries, they were somewhat narrower in almost every direction than at present; especially southeastwards; Lyons was a frontier-town. Its attractions lay principally in Paris, the only city north of the Alps comparable to Milan as a centre for the training of a man for a courtly, or an international, life; and in the government, which, in its extreme centralisation and in its idealisation of monarchy, corresponded most closely with the more practicable ideals of the day.

In planning a route through France it was advisable to go straight to Paris, if only for a few days, since to have been in Paris gave one a position in the provinces. As a place to stay at, Orleans was really far more frequently chosen by foreigners than Paris. Its university was as international as any in Europe, and ahead of any other in maintaining a circulating library for students, which lent any book on a receipt being given for it; "an extraordinary custom" says Evelyn. Here, too, began the district reputed best for spoken French, which brought strangers to stay at Blois and Tours and Saumur as well; to Saumur, perhaps, more than to the other two, by reason of the number and quality of its teachers on all subjects; it was a centre for Protestantism and learning in combination. Poictiers for law, Montpellier for medicine; and there is an end of the towns that the student-tourist abided in. For the country in general it should be added that just here, where centralisation and autocracy were developing most rapidly and thoroughly, was reckoned as the most decidedly free region of Europe, "liberty," according to sixteenth-century standards, depending not on administration being either lenient or constitutional, but on the extent to which the individual was not interfered with by social conventions. Political tyranny was not regarded as objectionable on principle, except by authors.

The United Provinces differed in no noteworthy respect from Holland of to-day, so far as territory goes, and during the earlier part of this period attracted but little attention; but as time went on and from imminent destruction they escaped into independence, they drew the tourist, first out of curiosity and subsequently as a State which compelled the study of every one who needed to observe the present and foresee the future. Many minor interests, too, brought individuals thither, as a result of Dutch enterprise. We find, for example, Sir William Brereton surveying the country in order to understand their methods of decoying wild-fowl; and Sir Richard Weston, who introduced locks into English rivers and the rotation of crops into English agriculture, learning both these novelties there. And though no one as yet went abroad to study the possibilities of practical philanthropy, there were many who noted, with an admiration that doubtless bore fruit, their charitable institutions of all kinds, unequalled then outside Rome. In one respect they were ahead of Italy: the suddenness of their prosperity resulted in the latest improvements in laying out towns—wider streets and greater regularity being more in evidence there than elsewhere. So uniform was the appearance of the houses, says one, that they seemed to have been all built by the same workmen at the same time; whereas the Italian towns, even in re-building, made no such experiments, because the old narrow streets formed the best safeguard against the surprise-attack of which they lived in constant dread, especially from the Turks' corsairs. No one town could claim precedence, though Amsterdam, even as early as 1600, struck De Rohan as equalled by few in Europe for wealth and beauty; it was rather the excellence and frequency of the towns that occasioned remark—twenty-nine fine ones within sixty leagues of boundary; together with the number of storks which the municipalities cherished, as animals known to harbour a preference for places where representative government flourished.

As for the Empire, it meant many different things to different visitors. The variety of territory and government was absolutely bewildering, yet certain marked cross-divisions presented themselves, such as the triple division of it into upper Germany, Hansa League (with Saxony), and frontier; the frontier being those districts which were forever either meeting, or fearing, a Turkish invasion. Then there was division according to politics, Catholic, Reformed, Protestant, to be studied by the Average Tourist for purposes of alliance, and a third classification according to form of government, the imperial authority, venerable and increasingly vague; princes; "free" towns. The first system of division has, however, most in common with the greater number of foreigners' interests, and of its three sub-divisions upper Germany was paid the greatest attention, partly because it lay across so many routes, partly because there was so much to see. It gives the dominant note to references to German-speaking countries in the travel-literature of the day, a note of peaceful energy and hopeful prosperity. While not recommended to these travellers' notice by a well-known past such as the greater coherence of France and Italy had enabled historians to evolve for them, those who lingered there, as most did, saw that its possessions, human and non-human, gave it a present interest and a promise not surpassed elsewhere. The Germany of the last fifty years of the sixteenth century is practically ignored by modern English historians: the story of its continual activity and of its continuous relations with England contain none of those sensational hindrances to the advance of civilisation with which historians concern themselves, but the frequent references to those relations by the contemporary historian of Queen Elizabeth's reign, William Camden, bear witness to the current opinion and knowledge which found expression in the number of visitors from all quarters and the attention they devote to it in relation to that accorded to other countries.

Among the towns of the Empire Augsburg was easily first; its finest street was the finest street in Europe, with roofs of copper; Nuremburg ran it close in many ways but had nothing to show in comparison with that one street. The cause of Augsburg's preëminence was its being the home of the Fuggers, the greatest financiers of Europe, but with their decline one function of the town that meant much in the way of attracting wayfarers, that of being the General-Post-Office for correspondence between Italy and Central Europe, passed to Frankfurt. The frequency of the use of stone as house-building material in these towns of Upper Germany and the show of burnished pewter and brass that was the pride of each inhabitant of standing, who let his huge hall-door lie open all day to exhibit it, were details which the Average Tourist would not overlook if he was observing as he ought where the wealth and security prevailed that were valuable in an ally. Thus did Strassburg fix itself in De Rohan's recollections. Democracy, to him, was a barely credible superstition; yet nowhere was he more courteously treated, nowhere did he see completer preparations against a long siege, nor any better arsenal, a model of cleanliness, orderliness, and efficiency. Neither was it lost on him that amongst all their collection of cannon there was not one for siege purposes; their aim was defence, not offence. As little to be ignored as the others was Ulm. A feature of the age was the development of the methods of water-supply in towns; Ulm was the centre for this industry; even Augsburg's water-supply had been planned there. And it was equally the leader in woodwork.

Similar characteristics would be found repeated on a somewhat less striking scale among the Hansa towns, with Lübeck ranking first in pleasantness by general consent. A specially charming feature lay in the number of swans swimming in the moats, though no Englishman so much as mentions them; doubtless because the one town that excelled it in this respect was London. Going east, the various capitals would provide each its own object-lesson, and, collectively, would illustrate the absence of avarice among German rulers as contrasted with the princes of Italy. Saxony formed the only exception and Dresden showed it. In spite of it being the last big town that Hentzner visited, its armoury aroused more enthusiasm in him than anything except the gardens of Naples and the all-sufficiency of Milan; and Moryson confirms this, adding also that the stable was the finest he had seen, with its 136 horses, all foreigners (the German horses had another stable to themselves), each with a glazed window and a green curtain in front of his nose, a red cloth, an iron rack, a copper manger, a brass shower-bath, and a separate cupboard for his trappings.

No Protestant who reached Dresden would miss Wittenberg, but the contrast must have been painful; poor and very dirty; the dwellers therein mainly students, prostitutes, and pigs, recalling the verses in use concerning Angers—

Leipzig was in favour for the purity of its German and Munich for pleasure, but Prague was another disappointment in spite of the Emperor living there; few stone houses and the wooden ones rough, and so filthy that the saying ran that the Turks would never take it despite the feebleness of its fortifications, because it was so well-guarded by its stenches; much as a Frenchman remarked at this time of Massa, between Genoa and Pisa, that it had a castle, but its chief defence was its fleas. Vienna was likewise far too well defended to attract visitors; a frontier-town against the Turks, always garrisoned by mercenaries and its streets unsafe in consequence.

To go on to the Spanish Netherlands, they were bound to be passed and re-passed in the course of the work of Europe, for geographical reasons, but still more so as a storm-centre of European politics. Nevertheless, the tourist, however serious, did not stay there long. The viceroy's business was generalship, and consequently there was no settled court: little to note, in fact, but the Spanish infantry at work and the effects of that; towns in ruins, dwindling trade. Yet the localisation of the war was intermittent enough not to interfere with the travellers from Upper Germany making a practice of reaching France through this district, according to Zinzerling, rather than direct, a habit resulting not only from the attractions that remained to Flemish towns, but still more from the direct route through Burgundy having become a highway of German mercenaries into France.

Moreover, no one who knew his business as a sight-seer omitted Antwerp. Trade and political importance had for some time been deserting it until it suggested to Howell in 1619 "a disconsolate Widow, or a superannuated Virgin that hath lost her Lover," but in 1600 it had not passed a state of mellowness without stagnation, with traces of its greatness fresh. Every visitor repeats the same idea—"the most beautiful town in Europe"; and not in the same formula, as would result from the idea being a guide's commonplace, but in words drawn from his own experience: "as seen from the cathedral tower the most beautiful town after Constantinople," says one; or Lithgow, extolling Damascus, "the most beautiful city in Asia," compares it, for every respect save style of architecture, to "that matchless pattern and mirror of beauty, Antwerp." It would seem to have been the first town to turn its fortifications into promenades, laid out in walks and planted with trees.[45] The citadel, too, was the finest out of Italy, on the word of a Venetian ambassador.

Elizabethan England, on the other hand, was rendered still more remarkable by possessing no fortresses at all. Two exceptions, Berwick and the Tower of London, served but to call attention to the rule, the Tower in particular, whose out-of-date character in the matter of defences greatly amused connoisseurs. One Venetian ambassador, indeed, with this fact in his mind, together with the miscellaneous character of its contents, describes it as not so much a fortress as a "sicuro deposito"—a safe-deposit.[46] The peacefulness which brought about this state of things is still borne witness to by the large glazed windows on the ground floors of Elizabethan country-houses, but no foreigner remarks on that in the presence of the other more striking points that testified to it then. Foscarini, the successor of the ambassador just referred to, had occasion to traverse the length of England in 1613. Writing home[47] he remarks on five facts concerning the country he passes through which seemed particularly noteworthy: (1) No unfruitful land throughout; (2) Every eight or ten miles a town comparable to a good Italian town (this was on the post-road to Scotland); (3) Number of navigable rivers; (4) and of beautiful churches; (5) No mercenary soldiers.

To make it clear why the visitor should be so specially struck by these features, it is necessary to recall how differently matters stood abroad.

During this period two thirty-year civil wars broke out in Europe, one in each half of the period, the first in France while the Empire was at peace, the second in the Empire while France was at peace. Between these two came twenty years of comparative quiet, but never a year when war was not to be seen in progress, or its effects still horribly new, in the course of a Continental tour. Incidentally, it may be pointed out that this peculiarly even distribution of peace and war gives the writings of travellers in Europe at this time striking value in relation to the effects of war and peace, not only in themselves but also as to their special characteristics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. No tourist came into contact with both wars; almost every tourist saw something of one district under the influence of war or of peace, while some other is seeing another district in an opposite state. There remains, therefore, in their writings, a continuous comment on each other; so continuous and so unconscious as to leave no room for this or that man's bias to influence the general impression.

Yet striking as the peacefulness of England was, it probably lessened rather than heightened what degree of attraction England possessed; since with war so normal a condition, war and its incidentals became a primary object of study even to those who did not profess soldiership. Neither did any but the Dutch need to learn the language of the country, which was what induced so many to make a lengthy stay in Tuscany and in Touraine. Neither was England a thoroughfare. Nor, even, were the recent achievements of Englishmen more than a minor cause of the considerable influx of visitors; not, at least, apart from the idea which is best expressed, perhaps, in the private letter of an Englishman writing from Aleppo: "Your last letter made me exceeding sorrowful, for therein you acquainted me with the death of blessed Queen Elizabeth, at the hearing whereof not only I and our English nation [i. e., the residents] mourned, but many other Christians who were never in Christendom, but born and brought up in heathen countries, wept to hear of her death, and said that she was the most famous queen that ever they heard or read of since the world began."[48]

For the "Virgin Queen" was a far greater marvel to contemporaries than to posterity. Except for her namesake of Spain, a century earlier, who throughout her political life had been the ally and wife of one of the cleverest statesmen of the age, there was no instance since the mistiest past of a queen-regnant a leader of men. At her accession civil war or conquest seemed inevitable and insolvency was a fact: yet before her death the bond of London "is," writes one of the chief financiers of the time,[49] "the first to-day [1595] in Europe," and she had added victory abroad to peace at home. To say "she had added" suggests nowadays the phraseology of the lady's paper, but it does really express not only the convention which the tourist may be taken as accepting but also the belief of reasonable men of the time.

It is true that many denied her right to the title of "Queen," or, indeed, to that of "Virgin"; but no one had the opportunity of doubting that both claims belonged to that secondary order of facts known as "historical." And just as her position as sovereign, and a strikingly successful one, was more wonderful then than it seems to-day, so too did her celibacy assure her of more reverence than we should instinctively concede. The mediæval idealisation of virginity, one of the most beneficial, perhaps, of all the ideas of the past that the Reformation killed, ensured a place in the life of the world, and the self-respect contingent on that, for all the unmarried women whose counterparts since have had no assistance socially from any convention, from nothing but their own individuality. But this idea, though dying, was not dead; and, as is the way with ideas, challenged attention all the more definitely for ceasing to be taken for granted.

These two facts, then, glorified Elizabeth in the eyes of foreigners; first, that she was a queen and a great ruler when effective queenship was half a myth; secondly, that she remained unmarried when virginity, considered as a virtue, was, so to speak, due to have its last flicker before finally dying down. The reign of James I was a sort of after-glow, except in so far as he had a reputation as a philosopher-king.

These ideas have a marked effect on the visitor's itinerary. He hurried, as a rule, to London, and thence, if the court was away, to that one of the palaces which was in use for the time being. The other country palaces, none far from London, would receive a visit, at any rate Windsor and Hampton Court; Oxford probably, Cambridge possibly, and there an end. Of Scotland and Wales it can only be said that the former was practically ignored except by a few Frenchmen, as a result of the ancient alliance; while to Wales they paid as little attention as the semi-Welsh queen did—none at all.

Among the foreigners who have given us their impressions of England are several who have much that is of interest to say and yet who seem to have been entirely overlooked. Nevertheless, these pages are already more numerous than the relative importance of England warrants. Let us therefore take but one, and that one the briefest; the more so since he is the likeliest to continue to be overlooked, writing as he did in Polish, from which hitherto no translation seems to have been made, not even in paraphrase.

Jakób Sobieski, the only man who was ever four times Marshal of the Polish Diet, travelled all over Europe in his youth. Henry IV of France made a personal friend of him, and it was at Paris that he spent more time than elsewhere, where, eventually, he witnessed the assassination of the king and was nearly lynched himself on the spot by the mob who took it into their heads to regard him as the murderer. However, he not only escaped, but after justice had been done on Ravaillac by his being torn asunder by horses, Sobieski had an invitation to dinner from a bootmaker who had collected certain pieces of Ravaillac and was arranging a loyal dinner-party at which they were to form the chief dish.

It was in the previous year (1609) that he visited England in the train of Myszkowski, the Marshal, negotiations being then in progress for the marriage of James I's daughter Elizabeth to Wladislas, son of the King of Poland. Sobieski, very young and very Catholic, was easily enough taken in by appearances to speak of James I as a model king, and to accept without question the declaration of the English Catholics that things had improved greatly since the death of the "severe and overbearing Queen Elizabeth." But it must be borne in mind that the King had not yet come to the bottom of the Treasury. One of Sobieski's remarks—that the Palace at Westminster is finer inside than outside—is an interesting comment on the impoverishment of the Crown that set in, if taken in conjunction with the remark of Gölnitz of Danzig, less than ten years later, who says exactly the opposite. In comparing the palaces around Paris with those of the English king, he says that the former are fine externally, but contain many rooms in which a respectable German would not care to receive an acquaintance; cobwebs, unpolished woodwork, walls in disrepair. One thing that scandalised Sobieski greatly was that in St. Paul's he found buying and selling going on, a statement confirmed by a Venetian ambassador here in 1607, who says that London possesses many fine churches but that these are mostly used for nothing but driving bargains in.[50]

Sobieski's business, however, lay at the court, and the court was out of town: the King at one palace, the Queen at another, Princess Elizabeth at a third. On paying their respects to the last-named a curiously characteristic thing happened; her chamberlain met them and asked in what language they would speak with the Princess, French, Italian, or Latin; she was equally at home in all three. Myszkowski chose Italian. The occasion, of course, was not a decisive one, but the conversation turned on Wladislas, the most anxious enquirer being an elderly lady-in-waiting who wanted to know if he was tall; the Princess, she would have them know, was tall, really tall, not made so artificially, with high heels, etc., to prove which she raised her mistress's skirt until they saw not merely blue stockings, but also saffron garters and white lace.

The last country of "European Europe" is Sobieski's own country, but only the last because, like England, it led nowhere. If omitted from a tour it was omitted with regret and consciousness of loss, being the largest monarchy in Christendom, 600 miles by 800, with a frontier reaching to within 150 miles of Moscow and 100 of the Black Sea; always on the verge of war, moreover, and a paradise of aristocracy, three good reasons for claiming the Average Tourist's attention, especially as among this aristocracy was always to be found a welcome and as high an average of attainments and qualities as anywhere north of the Alps. The statement, too, that it was not a thoroughfare must not be taken as absolute. Negotiations between the Tsars and the Papacy were frequent and these of course implied journeys through Poland by the friars whom the Papacy was wont to use as emissaries for long distances, as being more accustomed to endure privation and fatigue than bishops.

Besides, from southeast to northwest stretched the high road from the Black Sea through Kamienietz to Danzig, which one of these travellers assures us was the most thickly-populated highroad in Europe.[51] Danzig itself was one of the great centres of world-commerce; so great that its citizens were well justified in one detail of their daily life that Moryson records, that of taking off their hats as they passed the town hall. The commerce was very varied, but its main export seems to have been grain and its main import, Scotchmen. Of these latter there were certainly thousands;[52] in fact, from some date in the reign of Stephen Bathory (1575-86) till 1697, perhaps later, a "brotherhood" of Scots existed, recognised officially; and boys of fifteen to seventeen came over in such quantities and so often with such disastrous results, that in 1625 an edict was issued in Scotland prohibiting skippers taking over any who had not been sent for or had not 500 marks. But these can hardly be reckoned as tourists, travelling, as they did, Scot-fashion, on the "ubi panis, ibi patria" principle, with the object of sharing the retail-trade with Jews, so successfully that there has long lingered in Eastern Prussia the proverb, "Warte bis der Schotte kommt," alluding to the annual visits of these pedlars. Many, too, can be traced as becoming burgesses of Danzig, or of Posen.

Of visitors of the type with which this chapter is more specially concerned, the reign of the Henry who afterwards became Henry III of France marks a starting-point, judging partly from the evidence available before and after that date, partly from the statement in the report of the first resident Venetian ambassador there, Girolamo Lippomano, who came in that reign, that Poland was at that time an unknown land to Venetians.

So much for the Average Tourist at work. Let us now see how he spent his spare time. It goes without saying that the degree to which the foreigner enjoyed himself was more or less dependent on the behaviour of natives. Let us see, first, then, what reception he might expect. Small boys, of course, are the same yesterday, to-day and forever, but they were, if possible, somewhat more outspoken then. An ambassador's wife went to the Hague once, never again, "by reason of the boys and wenches who much wondered at her huge farthingales and fine gowns, and saluted her at every turn of the street with their usual caresses of 'Hoore! hoore!'" Concealing herself from view was impossible, no cart would hold her farthingale. And although with all the detail that is poured forth concerning the Venetian constitution, the feature in it which, though informal, has outlasted all the others, that of the limited despotism of the small boys, is ignored, yet in practice it was felt; Sastrow, for one, did not forget being pursued with "Tu sei tedesco, perciò Luterano."

As regards the adults, Frenchmen, or any one dressed in French fashions, had to beware of the Italian towns where the French had been masters for a time, and although Strassburg had a gate on the west, any one coming from the French side had to enter by the east gate. Commercial quarrels were even more bitter than political. When, for instance, the English removed their "staple" from Hamburg to Stade, nearer the mouth of the Elbe, it was not safe for an Englishman to be seen at Hamburg after the citizens had reached their mid-day stage of drunkenness. As for theological enmity, a Roman Catholic was saying his prayers one evening in Frisia with the windows open; an old woman marked it and came across the street to spit at his inn; the next morning she came again, to spit at him, and he had to put up with it for fear of worse happening.

With such exceptions as these there was not much to be feared from the upper classes; nor even, on the main routes, from the lower; in Dauphiné, for instance, all classes were pleasant enough, whereas at Rochelle strangers were liable to be pulled off their horses if they did not remove their hats when passing the guard at the gates. The two worst towns for brutality towards foreigners were, by general consent, London and Toulouse. In the former, according to Giordano Bruno, whose account only differs from every one else's in being more picturesque, the shop-people and artizans, on seeing a stranger, make faces, grin, laugh, hoot, call him dog, traitor, foreigner, the last name being the rudest they can think of, qualifying him for any other insult. Should he take the offensive, or put his hand to his weapon, an army of ruffians seems to spring out of the ground, flourishing a forest of sticks, poles, halberds, and partizans. In a more playful humour, one will pretend to run away behind a booth and come out charging on the stranger like an angry bull; if an arm gets broken, as happened to one Italian, the bystanders shout with laughter and the magistrate sees nothing reprehensible in the affair.[53] Oxford was a change for the better, for there it was only the students who behaved like brigands; as they did at Carcassonne, too, where the law-students insisted on tribute from visitors,—they called it a "bienvenu,"—or if it was not forthcoming, the contents of the visitor's trunks were shaken out. Yet among those of Oxford, Zinzerling makes an exception in the case of Queen's College, where as soon as a foreigner is recognised as such, he is brought an ox-horn full of beer.