The Renaissance traveller had little commendation for a land that was not fruitful, rich with grains and orchards.  A landscape that suggested food was to him the fairest landscape under heaven.  Far from being an admirer of mountains, he was of the opinion of Dr Johnson that “an eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility” and that “this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller” (Works, ed. 1787, vol. x. p. 359).

Footnote 400:  Itinerarii Italiae Rerumq.  Romanorum libri tres a Franc.  Schotto I.C. ex antiquis novisque Scriptoribus iis editi qui Romam anno Iubileii sacro visunt.  Ad Robertum Bellarminum S.R.E.  Card.  Ampliss.  Antverpiae.  Ex officina Plantiniana apud Joannem Moretum.  Anno saecularii sacro, 1600.

Thomas Cecil in Paris in 1562 studied the richly illustrated Cosmographia Universalis of Sebastien Munster (pub.  Basel 1550) which gave descriptions of “Omnium gentium mores, leges, religio, res gestae, mutationes.”

Sir Thomas Browne recommends to his son in France in 1661 Les Antiquities de Paris “which will direct you in many things, what to look after, that little time you stay there” (Works, ed.  Wilkin, 1846, vol. i. p. 16).

Footnote 401:  Such as:  (a) La Guide des Chemins:  pour aller et venir par tous les pays et contrees du Royaume de France.  Avec les noms des Fleuves et Rivieres qui courent parmy lesdicts pays.  A. Paris (n.d.) (1552?).

(b) Deliciae Galliae, sive Itinerarium per universam Galliam.  Coloniae, 1608.

(c) Iodoci Sinceri Itinerarium Galliae, Ita accomodatum, ut eius ductu mediocri tempore tota Gallia obiri, Anglia et Belgium adire possuit:  nec bis terve ad eadum loca rediri oporteat:  De Burdigala, Lugduni, 1616.

(d) Le Voyage de France Dresse pour l’instruction et commodite tant des Francais que des Estrangers.  Paris, chez Olivier de Varennes, 1639.

Footnote 402:  Maximilian Misson, A New Voyage to Italy; Together with Useful Instructions for those who shall Travel thither, 2 vols., London, 1695.

Footnote 403:  Count Leopold Berchtold, An Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers, London, 1789.

Footnote 404:  Mission, op. cit., vol. ii. p. 335.

Footnote 405:  See Hearne’s Collections, vol. viii., being vol.  I. of publications of The Oxford Historical Society, pp. 118, 133, 201, for the account of an assault by six highwaymen upon two gentlemen with their servants on the way from Calais, in September 1723.  Defoe wrote a tract on the subject, and it was treated in Boyer’s Political State, and in other periodicals of the time.

Footnote 406:  Letters from Italy, to which is annexed, An Admonition to Gentlemen who pass the Alps, London, 1767, pp. 44, 65, 172, 306.