not one in captivity (as Sir Walter was) promise, to regain his freedom? who would not promise not only mines, but mountains of gold, for liberty? And it is pity such a knowing well-weighed knight had not had a better fortune; for the Destiny, (I mean that brave ship, which he built himself, of that name, that carried him thither,) will prove a fatal destiny to him. Sir Walter landed at Plymouth, whence he thought to make an escape; and some say he hath tampered with his body by physic to make him look sickly, that he may be the more pitied, and permitted to lie in his own house. Count Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, speaks high language; and sending lately to desire audience of his majesty, he said, he had but one word to tell him : his majesty wondering what might be delivered in one word; when he came before him, he said only, Pirates! Pirates! Pirates! and so departed."

In the year 1619, Howell was employed by a large glass manufactory to travel abroad as their agent, and in this capacity he visited the principal places in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain. His descriptions of Amsterdam and Paris are particularly spirited and picturesque. He found France still grieving for the loss of Henry the Fourth, who had been assassinated about ten years before his visit to that country.

"Never was king so much lamented as this; there are a world not only of his pictures, but statues up and down France; and there is scarce a market town but hath him erected in the market place, or over some gate, not upon sign posts, as our Henry the Eighth. And by a public act of parliament, which was confirmed in the Consistory at Rome, he was entitled Henry the Great, and so placed in the Temple of Immortality. A notable prince he was, and of an admirable temper of body and mind; he had a graceful facetious way to gain both love and awe: he would never be transported beyond himself with choler, but he would pass by any thing with some repartee, some witty strain, wherein he was excellent. I will instance a few which were told me by a good hand. One day he was charged by the Duke of Bouillon to have changed his religion: he answered, no, cousin, I have changed no religion, but an opinion: and the Cardinal Perron being by, he enjoined him to write a treatise in his vindication; the cardinal was long about the work, and when the king asked from time to time where his book was, he would still answer him, that he expected some manuscripts from Rome before he could finish it. It happened one day that the king took the cardinal along with him to look on his new workmen and new buildings at the Louvre; and passing by one corner, which had been a long time begun but left unfinished, the king asked the chief mason why that corner was not all this while perfected? Sir, it is because I want some choice stones: no, no, said the king, looking upon the cardinal, it is because thou wantest manuscripts from Rome.

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Another time, when at the siege of Amiens, he having sent for the Count of Soissons (who had one hundred thousand francs a year pen

sion from the crown) to assist him in those wars, and that the Count excused himself by reason of his years and poverty, and all that he could do now was to pray for his majesty, which he would do heartily: this answer being brought to the king, he replied, will my cousin, the Count of Soissons, do nothing else but pray for me? Tell him that prayer without fasting is not available; therefore I will make my cousin fast also from his pension of one hundred thousand per annum.'

The following letter from Venice to Mr. Richard Altham at Gray's Inn, presents a lively picture of the author's impressions upon surveying that celebrated city, -now so lamentably fallen from its ancient greatness.

"I have now, a good while since, taken footing in Venice, this admired maiden city, so called, because she was never deflowered by any enemy since she had a being; not since her Rialto was first erected, which is now about twelve ages ago.

I protest to you, at my first landing I was for some days ravished with the beauties of this maid, with her lovely countenance. I admired her magnificent buildings, her marvellous situation, her dainty smooth neat streets, whereon you may walk most days in the year in a silk stocking and satten slippers without soiling them; nor can the streets of Paris be so foul as these are fair. This beauteous maid hath been often attempted to be vitiated; some have courted her, some bribed her, some would have forced her, yet she has still preserved her chastity entire; and though she hath lived so many ages, and passed so many shrewd brunts, yet she continueth fresh to this very day, without the least wrinkle of old age, or any symptoms of decay, whereunto political bodies, as well as natural, used to be liable. Besides, she hath wrestled with the greatest potentates upon earth: the emperor, the king of France, and most of the other princes of Christendom, in that famous league of Cambray, would have sank her; but she bore up still within her lakes, and broke that league in pieces by her wit. The Grand Turk hath been often at her, and though he could not have his will of her, yet he took away the richest jewel she wore in her coronet, and put it in his turban; I mean the kingdom of Cyprus, the only royal gem she had: he hath set upon her skirts often since, and though she closed with him sometimes, yet she came off still with her honour, &c.

I would I had you here with a wish, and you would not desire in haste to be at Gray's Inn; though I hold your walks to be the pleasantest place about London, and that you have there the choicest society. I pray present my kind commendations to all there, and service at Bishopsgate-street, and let me hear from you by the next post."

Two years afterwards, we find him at Madrid, upon mercantile business, at the period of Lord Bristol's embassy, and during the negociation for the proposed marriage between Prince Charles and the Infanta of Spain. It is interesting to read an

account of the effect produced at Madrid, by the romantic expedition of Charles, from the pen of an eye-witness.

"The great business of the match was tending to a period, the articles reflecting both upon church and state being capitulated and interchangeably accorded on both sides, and there wanted nothing to consummate all things, when, to the wonderment of the world, the Prince and the Marquis of Buckingham arrived at the court on Friday last, upon the close of the evening. They alighted at my Lord of Bristol's house, and the Marquis (Mr Thomas Smith) came in first with a portmanteau under his arm; then the Prince (Mr. John Smith) was sent for, who staid awhile on t'other side of the street in the dark. My Lord of Bristol, in a kind of astonishment, brought him up to his bedchamber, where he presently called for pen and ink, and dispatched a post that night to England, to acquaint his Majesty how in less than sixteen days he was come safely to the coast of Spain;-that post went lightly laden, for he carried but three letters.

I know the eyes of all England are earnestly fixed now upon Spain, her best jewel being here; but his journey was like to be spoiled in France, for if he had staid but a little longer at Bayonne, the last town of that kingdom hitherwards, he had been discovered; for Mons. Gramond, the governor, had notice of him not long after he had taken post. The people here do mightily magnify the gallantry of the journey, and cry out that he deserved to have the Infanta thrown into his arms the first night he came : he hath been entertained with all the magnificence that possibly could be devised. On Sunday last, in the morning betimes he went to St. Hierom's Monastery, whence the Kings of Spain used to be fetched the day they are crowned; and thither the king came in person with his two brothers, his eight counsels, and the flower of the nobility; he rid upon the king's right hand thro' the heart of the town under a great canopy, and was brought so into his lodgings in the king's palace, and the king himself accompanied him to his very bed-chamber. It was a very glorious sight to behold; for the custom of the Spaniard is, tho' he go plain in his ordinary habit, yet, upon some festival or cause of triumph, there is none goes beyond him in gaudiness."

The following description is very characteristic; and shews that the nil admirari spirit which our modern travellers carry about with them is lineally inherited from their ancestors.

"For outward usage, there is all industry used to give the Prince and his servants all possible contentment; and some of the king's own servants wait upon them at table in the palace, where I am sorry to hear some of them jeer at the Spanish fare, and use other slighting speeches and demeanour. There are many excellent poems made here since the Prince's arrival, which are too long to couch in a letter; yet I will venture to send you this one stanza of Lope de Vega's.

Carlos Estrardo Soy

Que siendo amor mi guia,

Al cielo d' Espana voy

Por ver mi Estrella Maria.

There are comedians once a week come to the palace, where, under a great canopy, the Queen and the Infanta sit in the middle, our Prince and Don Carlos on the Queen's right-hand, the King and the little Cardinal on the Infanta's left-hand. I have seen the Prince have his eyes immoveably fixed upon the Infanta half an hour together, in a thoughtful speculative posture, which sure would needs be tedious, unless affection did sweeten it: it was no handsome comparison of Olivares, that he watched her as a cat does a mouse. Not long since, the Prince, understanding that the Infanta was used to go some mornings to the Casa de Campo, a summer-house the King hath on t' other side of the river, to gather May-dew, he rose betimes and went thither, taking your brother with him; they were let into the house and into the garden, but the Infanta was in the orchard; and there being a high partition-wall between, and the door doubly bolted, the Prince got on the top of the wall, and sprung down a great height, and so made towards her; but she, spying him first of all the rest, gave a shriek, and ran back: the old marquis, that was then her guardian, came towards the Prince and fell on his knees, conjuring his highness to retire, in regard he hazarded his head if he admitted any to her company; so the door was opened, and he came out under that wall over which he had got in. I have seen him watch a long hour together in a close coach in the open street, to see her as she went abroad : I cannot say that the Prince did ever talk with her privately, but publicly often, my Lord of Bristol being interpreter; but the King always sat hard-by to overhear all. Our cousin Archy hath more privilege than any, for he always goes with his fool's coat where the Infanta is with her Meninas and ladies of honour, and keeps a blowing and blustering among them, and blurts out what he lists.

One day they were discoursing what a marvellous thing it was that the Duke of Bavaria, with less than fifteen thousand men, should dare to encounter the Palsgrave's army, consisting of above twentyfive thousand, and to give them an utter discomfiture, and take Prague presently after whereunto Archy answered, that he would tell them a stranger thing than that; was it not a strange thing, quoth he, that in the year eighty-eight there should come a fleet of one hundred and forty sail from Spain to invade England, and that ten of these could not go back to tell what became of the rest?"

Detached sketches, like these, of particular scenes, enable us to form as correct a notion of Spanish manners and customs, as we can perhaps collect from the more elaborate picture which he afterwards draws of the general character of the people.

"Touching the people, the Spaniard looks as high, tho' not so big, as a German; his excess is in too much gravity, which some, who

know him not well, hold to be pride; he cares not how little he labours, for poor Gascons and Morisco slaves do most of his work in field and vineyard: he can endure much in the war, yet he loves not to fight in the dark, but in open day or upon a stage, that all the world might be witnesses of his valour; so that you shall seldom hear of Spaniards employed in night-service, nor shall one hear of a duel here in an age. He hath one good quality, that he is wonderfully obedient to government; for the proudest Don of Spain, when he is prancing upon his ginnet in the street, if an Alguazil shew him his Vare, that is, a little white staff he carrieth as a badge of his office, my Don will down presently off his horse, and yield himself his prisoner. He hath another commendable quality, that when he giveth alms, he pulls off his hat and puts it in the beggar's hand with a great deal of humility. His gravity is much lessened since the late proclamation came out against ruffs, and the king himself shewed the first example; they were come to that height of excess herein, that twenty shillings were used to be paid for starching of a ruff: and some, tho' perhaps he had never a shirt to his back, yet he would have a toting huge swelling ruff about his neck. He is sparing in his ordinary diet, but when he makes a feast he is free and bountiful. He is a great servant of the ladies, nor can he be blamed, for, as I said before, he comes of a goatish race; yet he never brags of, nor blazes abroad, his doings that way, but is exceedingly careful of the repute of any woman, (a civility that we much want in England.)

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The Spaniard is generally given to gaming, and that in excess; he will say his prayers before, and if he win, he will thank God for his good fortune after. He is very devout in his way, for I have seen him kneel down in the very dirt when the Ave-Mary bell rings; and some, if they spy two straws or sticks lie cross-wise in the street, they will take them up and kiss them, and lay them down again. He walks as if he marched, and seldom looks on the ground, as if he contemned it. I was told of a Spaniard who having got a fall by a stumble, and broke his nose, rose up, and in a disdainful manner said, Voto a tal esto es caminar por la tierra;—this it is to walk upon the earth.

Touching their women, nature hath made a more visible division 'twixt the two sexes here than elsewhere; for the men, for the most part, are swarthy and rough, but the women are of a far finer mould, and are commonly little: and whereas there is a saying that makes a complete woman, let her be English to the neck, French to the waist, and Dutch below; I may add for hands and feet let her be Spanish, for they have the least of any. They have another saying, a Frenchwoman in a dance, a Dutch-woman in the kitchen, an Italian in a window, an England-woman at board, and the Spanish a-bed. When they are married, they have a privilege to wear high shoes, and to paint, which is generally practised here; and the Queen useth it herself. They are coy enough, but not so froward as our English; for if a lady go along the street, (and all women going here veiled, and their habit so generally alike, one can hardly distinguish a Countess from a cobler's wife,) if one should cast out an odd ill-sounding word and ask