(1). Imprimis, an infant Romulus, in brass, in a sitting posture, digd out of Quirinus his temple, on the Quirinal hill, when those ruins were removed to make way for the very fine, pretty, rich church or chapel of Sta Maria della Vittoria, built in memory of the great victory the Emperor had over the King of Bohemia near Prague, where are hanged up in triumph the banners, ensigns, and colours that were there taken, whereof I remember was, mitres, crosses, the Pope's triple crown, &c., all turned upside down, with this motto--Extirpentur.[*] This agrees with Raymond’s description, p. 105. The little figure very ancient.

(2). Item, a very ancient Æsculapius, in brass -- the medicinal god -- in a long robe, with his baton or knotty staff in his hand, with a snake round about it, dugg out of the ruins of his temple in the island of the river of Tyber, where now standeth the hospital of St. Bartholomey.

(3). A very ancient brass image of Hercules, one foot broke off, with his club in his hand; esteemed for its good features, and very like other marble statues and brass medals that I have seen of Hercules, whereof there is one amongst my drawers. This was dugg out of his temple near the Tyber, at the foot of the Aventine Hill at Rome -- still standing, almost all, and made a chappell.

(4). Item, a brass flat piece, with the figure of a man drawing an ox by the horns; very ancient, being dugg out of another temple of Hercules that stood upon the Aventine Hill, on the place where he killed the thief Cacus, where now standeth a church dedicated to St. Stephen, which by its title beareth the memory of the old story of Cacus, it being still called Sto Stefano nel Caco.

(5). Item, two old Roman sacrificing priests in their robes, and patina in hand: the one a very good one, -- if not ancient, yet cast from ancient; the other modern.

(6). Hercules Juvenis, with his club and lion's skin; another of them; both supposed modern.

(7). Item, a maymed Mercury, with one arm and one legg; ancient, dugg out of his temple.

(8). An ancient brass Dolphin, dedicated to Venus, and dug out her temple. Nam Venus orta mari.

(9). An handsome ancient busto (as called at Rome) of Augustus -- that is, the head and shoulders -- in brass.

(10). Item, a Leda, with her swan; supposed to be modern, but cast from ancient.

(11). A flat brass piece, of several Cupidons scaring one another with a vizard; being a bachanalia piece, dugg out of the Temple of Bacchus.

(12). A little key, dug out of the Temple of the Moon.

(13). Item, a brass wreathed snake, in circles, having a head at both ends; dedicated to Eternity.

(14). Item, a flat piece of brass, with the rapture of Proserpine by a Centaure.

(15). The knuckles of the legg bone of mutton, which we call a cockal, with which children use to play; such an one dugg out of the ruins, in brass, that sheweth the Romans used them in games called Ludi talarii.

(16). The River of Tyber, carved on a piece of coral; ancient.

(17). Two Priapisms, in brass, being votes or offerings to that absurd heathen deity.... modern, from ancient.

(18). A Roman Ægle, in brass; modern.

(19). A piece of a kind of jasper stone, almost like a heart, polished, being a piece of that famous obelisk that now standeth in the chiefest place of Rome, called Piazza Navona, olim Circus Agonalis, set up there on a most magnificent fabrick, like a rock, out of which floweth 4 fountains, very large, signifying by the figures of colossean statues of the 4 rivers of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, by the hand of Cavalier Bernino, that famous architect, my neighbour and friendly acquaintance, -- Pope Innocent the 10th being at that vast expense.

When I was at Rome, 1646, this obelisk lay broken in 4 or 5 pieces, with the fall of it, in the Circle of the Emperor Caralla Emperor Caracalla.[*]It is now called the Circus of Maxentius, or of his son Romulus. near St. Sebastian and Metella's Tomb, now a noble antiquity, and called Capo di Bove. I took another stone, and with it broke off of the butt end of it this piece and as much more, and had this polished. The obelisk, as it lay then and as it is now, is full of Egyptian hyeroglifficks, of which Father Kercherius, that eminent Jesuit, and of my acquaintance, hath writt a large folio. All the other guglios,[*]The word is properly not guglio, but guglia. or obeliscs, at Rome seem to be all of the same sort of stone, and are stupendious to imagine how they could possibly be hewn in that bigness and hight out of any rock, though it may be they might afterward be hewn into that pyramidical proportion and shape that they now bear. All full of Egyptian hyroglificks, that largest of all before St. Peter at the Vatican excepted, which is one intyre precious stone -- at least, better than marble, and I think (by my piece) a jasper; and yet is esteemed to be higher by 3 or 4 foot than the maypole in the Strand at London. Another is dexterously placed on the Via Flaminia, at the Porto dell Populo, in a poynt to be seen from 3 of the great streets of Rome. Another dispute is, how it was possible to transport so vastly weighty things from Egypt to Rome as one of those stones are, they having then no such ships as we have now, their byremes and tryremes being but pittiful boats, yet sufficient to make them masters of the seas in those times. There are several treatises on this subject; and the most probable that I find is, that they were brought upon warffs or raffts of many pines and firs, fastened by art together, and, the stones being laid upon them, they, with a stearer or 2 or 3 at the end of those raffts, came terra, terra, terra (as the Italians term it) along the coast, or, at least, from promontory to promontory, until they came to Ostia, and so 10 miles up the Tyber to Rome. Many long and large warfes or rafts of these fir and pine trees I have found troublesome to our boats on the Danube, the Rone or Rhodanus, on the Rhine, and Elve, down which rivers an infinite abundance of that tymber passeth daily thus fastened together, and on some of them they build 2 or 3 little hutts or cabans and dress their meat. Thus as to these pyramids' transport.

Another of these vast stones layeth all along full of hyerogliphics, in that which is now Prince Ludovicio's, formerly Sallust's garden.[*]This is now erected in front of the church of Sta. Trinita de’ Monti. And, to see how Rome layeth under its own ashes, one walketh in the streets over one of these famous Egyptian obelisks every day, in a little by passage of a narrow descent that is between Antonina's famous piller and the Rotunda. I could go directly to it if I were there, but I have forgotten the name of the place. There one day an antiquarian had me down a poor man’s cellar, and there showed me 4 or five yards of one of these pyramids.[*] This now stands on the Monte Citorio. How far it runneth under ground they know not. It was full of hieroglyphics, and it pittied me to see how the stone was cut and mangled for the convenience to set wine vessels on it. The poor man getteth his rent by showing of it to strangers that are curious -- as I confess I always was, and would wish every gentleman traveller to be so.

(20). Item, two large loadstones, one armed with steel, in a black velvet case, which I have hanging in my study upon a piece of silk, in a perpendicular thread, when it standeth still, the north point hangeth still due north; by which I found that our cathedral of Christ Church, Canterbury, doth not stand due east and west, but the east end is at the least 2 poynts of the compass too much to the southward. Now, where it is generally received that the loadstone draweth iron to it, by this perpendicular posture of the stone upon a thread, and putting a key or any other piece of iron to it, the iron draweth the loadstone quite round, as far off as you please, so that it seemeth there is no compulsion on either side, but a mutual reciprocal compliance between them both, which we are fain to call sympathy. Now, on the other side, I have in my cabinet another triangular, unequilateral, bumped-up, large loadstone that weigheth almost half a pound, which is a rude thing to look on, but of good value. This is unarmed, but it is strange to see how great an antipathy there is between the north point of this stone and the other that hangeth perpendicular in the velvet bagg, this making that (at a great distance) fly from it with violence as often round as you please; and, on the other side, there is a great sympathy between the south point of the one stone and the north point of the other. For this seemeth strange to me, that every loadstone, be it in pieces bigger or less, have still their north and south point, according to the two poles axill of the world. With the hidden qualities of these 2 stones I used sometimes to make sport with young gentry in telling them their fortunes, &c. as if there had been an intelligence between them and me – “If so and so, then do so and so.” And truly it is wonderful to me to think that it was the loadstone that found out America and the Straights of Megallan, and by virtue of which several nations, especially England, have almost found out the north-west passage of the West Indies, and so to go a much shorter cut from England by the West Indies to the East. And if the Terra Incognita, or the fifth part of the unknown world, be ever found out, it must be done by virtue of the loadstone.

(21). Item, a piece of a heavy mineral stone, that looketh like a loadstone, but hath no such attractive virtue; but at Hall, near Insprugg in Tiroll, among the hearts of the Alps, I had the curiosity to be droven in a wheelbarrow almost 2 miles under ground, to see the labourers there in the gold and silver mines belonging to the Archduke of that country. It was horrid to go thither, and more horrid to see, but they told us the Emperor and the Empress, and all the royal family of the house of Austria use out of curiosity to go thither. I and my companion having on canvass frocks to keep us from the wet and filth, we having a mountain of the Alps 3 or 4 mile high over our heads, and a torrent of water under us, and a bridge of boards most of the way. When we came into the vast high vaults, where hundreds and hundreds of men or Vulcans were at work, one of the overseers (a genteel person), out of courtesy, would have let us see their art by blowing up a part of the mine by gunpowder; but we durst not venture it. Another great mystery to me was, that I saw in the several high vaults, about the middle, a coggell of wood hanging in a small rope; and I asking wherefore those bastons or pieces of wood hung there, I wondered the more they told me, that, as the loadstone in the iron mines directed to the veins of iron, so these coggells of wood directed them to the veins of gold and silver; and they seemed to be loth to tell us what sort of wood it was, but at lenght length we were told (whether truly or no I know not), that it was of a ground ash.

This stone is a piece of the one they digg out of those mines, out of which, by the force of fire, is extracted the silver and the gould, being separated from the dross, which is there cast up and down into great hills near the places where the fornices for melting are.

(22). Ten miles, almost, round about Rome, under the vineyards and cornfields, are hollow caves, streets, rooms, chappells, finely paynted, &., which is called Rome underground, or the Catacombe, wherein to the poor Christians in the times of persecution fledd to hide themselves, to perform the Christian duties of preaching and prayer and sacraments. And some of these underground streets were for their burials, -- not on the flat, as we bury on the ground, but the corps were at their lenght length immuralld in theca's, or, as it were, in hollow shelves dug into the wall on both sides; and it is a horrid place to go to, and dangerous, for fear of damps, for which we had little bottles of essences and spirits to put to our noses, and tynder purses (as the mode is), with flint, steel, and match, to lighten our torches and candles when they went out. My curiosity held me there about 3 hours at one time in one of these cymeteries; I going down a pair of stayre, and so walked some streets in Rome underground, a second story deep, until we came to water, which made us return. But the best and freest from danger, and easiest to be seen, are those at St. Agnese, out of the Porta St. Agnese, where in half an hour I came to a street that I could tell 10 stories of corps high; and so all along, about 30 or 40 in lenght length. I and other gentlemen with me observed that, though there were divers epitaphs and writings, with Ρo, Χto, Ρo, Xo, with a turtle dove and an olive branch in its beack, and a palm branch, with Po ✝o, yet, I taking all along on the one side, and my companions on the other, we could meete with never an Orate pro anima -- praying for the souls of the dead not being then known, in the primitive times, there being no such thing as purgatory then known in the world, -- that being of a later invention, to bring a vast revenue to the Pope or Camera Apostolica.

From this Rome underground I brought a very fair small ancient lamp, and a small bottle with a long neck -- both of them of a very fine red earth; which, by Dr. Plott, I sent as a present to the cabinet of Oxford Library. One other earthen lamp, and a glass bottle with such a long neck, and a broken one in two pieces, I have in my cabinet. These bottles are called lachrymatorij, or tear-bottles, because the friends and relations of the defunct were in ancient time accustomed at the funeral to carry each of them a lachrymatorio in his hand, to save his tears that he shed for his deceased friend, and then leave those bottles behind them with the immuralld corps. David seemeth to have allusion to this ancient custom when he saith, Psalm 56, 8, "Thou hast put my tears into thy bottle."

(23). Another thin piece of jasper stone, unpollished, it being sawn off of that piece of the guglio, pyramid, or obelisc that standeth now in the Piazza Navona at Rome; of which I have spoken at large, page the 7, &c., where you may be satisfied about those wonderful obeliscs.

(24). Paste antiche Romane incognite, -- several pieces of a flat ancient Roman paste (as they term it) unknown, -- i. e. that the art of it is lost or forgotten. These several pieces I pict up amongst the antiquarians. They are of all sorts of colours, as you may see where they are broken. They are on the outside rude and rough, but, being polished, it looks like a precious stone, as you may see by several small pieces of them that I caused to be polished, and cut in the figure of a heart. One green, with spots like stars; the other a plain blew. They seem to be a kind of glass, or rather of that material of which enamell is made; but whichsoever the matter is I know not. But they put an esteem upon them, and I was made pay dear for thēthem.

(25). Small cinders and pummy stones of Mont Aetna, in Sicily, where I never was; but I had them from my Lord of Winchelsy, my noble friend, who hath bin there.

(26). Several pieces of cinders, pummystone, and ashes of the Mount Vesuvius, near Naples, which was 4 times the poynt of my reflection, -- I facing about for England from the topp, or crater, or voragine (as they term it) of that mountain; of which I have spoken at large in my Itinerario d’Italia.[*] See the Introduction to this volume. Raymond says, “This mountain was the ultima meta of our voyage to Naples.” (p. 163.)

(27). Several rude pieces of mountain chrystall, as they grow sexanguler always among the Alps; amongst which there is one is a very clear, handsome, elegant piece, something longer than my middle finger, 4 or 5 inches compass, sexangular, inaequilateral, cylindrical, pyramidical.[*] The same article is described on a separate paper as “a cristall as it naturally groweth, sexangular, which I met with on the Penine Alps, on the Sempronian Mount, now called Mount Samplon.” Sir Henry Wotton, among his bequests, mentions “a piece of crystall, sexangular (as they grow all), grasping divers things within it, which I bought among the Rhaetian Alps, in the very place where it grew.” (Walton’s Lives, 109, ed. Oxf. 1824.) For the passage of the Simplon, as it was in those days, see Raymond, p. 248. This I met with amongst the Rhaetian Alps. One would wonder that nature should so counterfett art. There is no man but seeth it but would veryly believe that by tools and art it had binn put into that figure. I remember that the Montecolian man that sold it me told me that he ventured his life to clamber the rocks to gett it. Where it grew I cannot say; but where it was, it was covered, he said, with long sedgy grass growing about it, under the dripp of an higher rock, where the snow continually melteth and droppeth; and so all the mountayn chrystall is increased ab extra by an external addition, and groweth not from any rock.

(28). Item, a small gold Salerno ring, written on the outside, not like a posey in the inside, but on the out—Bene scripsisti de ME, Thoma. The story of it is, that Thomas Aquinas, being at Salerno, and in earnest in a church before a certain image there of the blessed Virgin Mary, his earnest devotion carried him so far as to ask her whether she liked all that he had writ of her, as being free from original sin, the Queen of Heaven, &t.; and intreated her to give him some token of her acceptance of his indeavours in the writing so much in her behalf. Upon which the image opened its lipps, and said, Bene scripsisti de ME, Thoma.

Salerno layeth a little beyond Naples, on the Mediterranean sea; and the goldsmiths of the place, for their profit, make thousands of these rings, and then have them touch that image which spake. And no marchant or stranger that cometh thither but buyeth of these rings for presents and tokens. An English marchant gave me this at Naples. The Schola Salernitana was anciently famous for physicians.

(29). Item, a gold ring, with the cutt of an ancient Graecian head on a garnet stone set in it. An° 1650, being the year of jubilee, I had the honour to conduct the Earl of Chesterfield, Phillip Lord Stanhop, into Italy; and at Rome he presented me with this stone, telling me that it was sold him not only for a Graecian head, but for Aristotle’s. I sett it in gold at Rome, as the jeweller advised me, in that transparent posture as it now hath, that so, the stone being pelluced, the head is much the plainer to be seen both ways. The side next to the finger will soil, and must sometimes be cleaned. The cutt is certainly a very very ancient intaglio, (as they use to call such cutts at Rome), melting away the g in the pronunciation, and pronouncing it almost with a ll—intallia.

(30). It.,Confetti di Tivoli, a box full of sugar plums of the town of old Tybur, now called Tivoli. They seem to be so like sugar plums that they will deceive any man that only seeth them, especially when the counterfeit amand and muske comfeits, made out of the same materials, are mixed amongst them. But the things themselves are nothing but the gravel or sand of the river Teverone, that runneth by Tyvoly (10 miles from Rome), and entreth into the river of Tybur. The plumms are of a chauchy or brimstony matter.

(31). Some of the floore of brimstone from that horrid sulfurious mountain at the other side of Naples called Sulfaterra, near Puteoly, now called Puzzuolo.

(32.) A bow ring of Persia, cutt out of an agate stone, which must be worn on the right thumb, with poynt upward. With this they draw at ease the strongest bow, and then, letting the bent thumb go, the arrow hath the greater violence.

(33). Item, Aëtites, Lapis Aquilaris, or the eagle stone, which I bought of an Armenian at Rome. They differ sometimes in colour. This is a kind of a rough, dark, sandy colour, and about the bigness of a good wallnut. It is rare, and of good value, because of its excellent qualities and use, which is, by applying it to childbearing women, and to keep them from miscarriages.[*] Some directions for the use of the stone are here omitted. . . . . It is so useful that my wife can seldom keep it at home, and therefore she hath sewed the strings to the knitt purse in which the stone is, for the convenience of the tying of it to the patient on occasion; and hath a box she hath, to put the purse and stone in. It were fitt that either the dean’s or vice-dean’s wife (if they be marryed men) should have this stone in their custody for the public good as to neighbourhood; but still, that they have a great care into whose hand it be committed, and that the midwives have a care of it, so that it still be the Cathedral Church’s stone.

(34). A very artificial anatomy of a human eye, with all its films or tunicles, by way of turnery in ivory and horn; together with the optick nerve which runneth into the brain, from which nerve the eye receiveth all its several motions. This excellent piece of art hath, when it is opened, fourteen pieces in it; but are, indeed, but a little more parcels in themselves than half so many. When you take them in sunder, the best way to keep them in order is to lay them all in a row, and then you shall find that the first piece and the last are in nature but one tunicle, and by art two, if you join them together; each half (but one) hath its correspondent—the corneus with the corneus, the two black ones likewise the same, and so the rest. The little apple of it also is included in two half tunicles. The usual way of anatomizing an eye, longways, by turning the films flat over one another, could not be so visibly imitated by art; but this, or roundway, was the invention of the College of Physicians at Padoüa, where an artist of High Germany imployed his skill in turning according to these doctors’ orders, and at length produced this excellent piece of art—this anatomy of the human eye. I have one also of an oxes eye, but that is very rude, gross, and not exact. I bought this eye at Venice of a High Dutch turner, and, for the proof of it, I went a double share in two anatomies, of a man’s body and a woman’s, chiefly for this eye’s sake, and it was found to be exact.

(35). Item, a fair large toadstool or mushroom of stone, very weighty, which is not a mushroom petrified, but grew always a stone, in this shape and figure. I bought it of an Armenian at Venice, who had many more of them to sell, of several sorts of colours and bigness, and divers other stones of pretty forms and figures.

(36). Stylus Romanus. The antiquarian that sold it me avowed it to be truly ancient; but thousands may daily be made, this being but a piece of steel about the lenght length of one’s middle finger, like a bodkin, with a blunt point at one end and a flat on the other end, the edge rabated on both sides, so that with the one end one may make an impression upon paper or the bark of trees, and with the other end one may easily rub out or make smooth what had been written. So that vertere stylum was as much as to recant of such and such things as he had formerly written.

(37). Item, a large piece of sea-horse tooth, said to be good against poison, next to an unicorn’s horn.

(38). Lusus Naturae, a kind of a periwinkle’s shell,[*] This was, of course, a fossil shell. and divers other fashion stone shells, which I had out of the curiosities of art and nature at Douay[*] The name of this place ought to be written Doué. (not that in Flanders), 3 or 4 leagues off from Saulmur, or the river Loyre, in France, where there is an ancient amphitheater.

(39). A pretty little padlock and key of guilt mettle, and a piece of coral, given me by a nunn, -- whose guifts are commonly costly, for you must return the double.

(40). Item, a pretty kind of nun’s work purse, made of greenish silk, and a carved work mother of pearls shell, presented me likewise by a nun, for which I paid for double, according to custom.

(41). Item, a pair of common Italian cards, which have, instead of our 4 sorts, 4 other names—(1) Denari, (2) Coppe, (3) Spade, (4) Bastoni—money, cups, fauchions or swords, and clubbs (or rather cogils); and, having the same number with ours, one may play all the English games with them, as well as the Italian.

(42). Item, Monsieur Demarests’[*] Jean Desmarets, for whom see Bayle, x, 236, seqq. ed. Paris, 1820; or Nouv. Biographie Générale. learned and ingenious pack of cards, called Jeu d’ Armoire de l’Europe, composed, as I was told in France, upon this occasion. Cardinal Mazarine being in place of a guardian to the now reigning King of France, in his minority, (Louis XIVth,) and the king being grown up to the age of years in which he took delight to play at cards, he, that the king, at his playing of cards, might also learn something else of worth and knowledge in his very play, put this virtuoso, Monsr Desmarests, to invent a pair of cards that might have that effect; upon which he invented these cards, which, having the ordinary marks of hearts, clubs, spades, and diamonds, he maketh hearts to be France, and the king to be king of hearts; clubs to be Italy, and all its principalities; spades to be the northern parts,—Germany, England, Denmark, Sweden, &c.; and diamonds to be Spain, Portugall, and all their territories. This done, when the king went to play at cards, a fair mapp of Europe was to be laid upon the carpet, and, when the cards were dealt unto the king, he was not to play his game at cards until he was first instructed in blazonry, geography, and history of this or that card he had in his hand,—blazoning the arms as it is upon each card; then, to find out the place in the mapp of Europe that the card signified; and, lastly, to tell some little history of that place; and then, to play the ordinary game. So that the king learned armory, geography, and history, all at playing of cards, there being a little book of Mr. Desmarests, which belong to this pack of cards, to teach his majesty how to use them. It is in French, with my cards.

What foundation this knowledge of the king’s may have bin[*] This word seems superfluous. layde as to his present wars, I know not; but now, l’espé á la maine (his sword in his hand), Lorraine is the 3 of hearts, the 17 provinces of the Low Countries is the 3 of spades, the Elect Palatine is the 6 of spades, the canton of the Swizzer is the 2 of spades, Catalonia is the 4 of diamonds, &c., and the terrible game of war goeth on. It had binn happier for Europe that he had never learned this Jeu d’ Armoires than that it should have bin the occasion of his shedding so much blood. However, the king of spades, the Emperor and his northern allies, maintain the game against the king of hearts; and what card will be trump we know not at the end.

(43). Item, the skin, head, and legs of a cameleon, perfumed and stuffed. The creature was given me alive in Africa, and it liveth (not by the air, as the report goeth, but) by flies chiefly, as the Moores taught me how to feed it in this manner, by laying in the cage, or sometimes out of the cage in which I kept it, upon a paper some sugar and sweetmeats, which allureth the flies to come to it. The creature hath in its gorge or gola a toung that lieth 4 dobled, with a small fibulus button at the end of it, which hath on it a viscous matter. So soon as it seeth the flies at the sweetmeats it darteth forth that toung at a great distance, and with the viscous matter pulleth in the fly to her mouth, and eateth it; and so it will do many, one after the other, so that while we sailed homewards all along the Africa shore, and came out of the Mediterranean Sea by the Streights of Gibralter into the Atlantick Ocean, and then turning northward by Spain and Portugall—all that time (I say) that we were in those hot and southerly climates, although it was in January 1662, there were store of flies, and the creature fed on them heartily, and lived well. But as we sailed homeward into the more cold and northern climates, as the flies failed us, so that decayed, and at lenght length for want of flies it died; and I had the chirurgeon of the shipp embalm it, and put the skin as you see it.

It seemeth to be a kind of lizard, but is as slow in pace as a tortes, winding its tail about the sticks of the cage, to help and secure its gradations. The ribs and the back are boned and scaled like fish. Although the story of its living by the air be fabulous, yet the other story of its changing itself into all colours is very true, as I have seen this of all manner of colours, like silk, and sometimes changeable colours, as the sun happened to shine upon it; and sometimes I have seen it coal-black. But the story is false that it hath a pellucid body, like cristal, and so it will be the colour of scarlet or any other cloth that you lay it upon. No, no such thing; but one way to make it change its colours was to anger it, and put it into a passion, by touching of it with a stick or a bodkin, or the like. Then it would fetch great breaths, many one after another, by which it made itself swell very much, and in its swellings out came the colours of all sorts, which changed as it was more or less provoked to anger. And when the passion was over, it would look as pale as a clout. It hath no eyelids, and therefore never winketh; but when it sleepeth, the ball of the eye being as round as round can be, it turneth that ball quite round, the inside outward, and so sleepeth. Matthiolus on Dioscorides sayth that it layeth eggs as a tortes doth, and is bred of those eggs.

(44). Item, the finger of a Frenchman, which I brought from Tholouse, the capital of Languedoc, in France. The occasion this: there is, amongst others, a great monastery of Franciscans, with a very fair large church and cloisters, the earth of which place is different from all others in this, that all the dead men and women’s corps that are buried there turn not into putryfaction and corruption, and so into earth, as in all other places; but, on the contrary, the bodies that are buried there in the space of 2 years are found in the posture that they were laid into the grave, dried into a kind of momy, being all entire and whole, dried to almost skin and bone,—the nerves or sinews and tendons stiffly holding all the body together, that you may take it and place it standing upright against a wall. And in the vaults whither these dried corps are removed there are abundance of them, like so many fagotts, and as stiff and strong. Among which they shewed us the corps of a souldier, that died by the wound of a stabb with a dagger in his breast, upon the orifice of which one of his hands lay flatt, and when they pulled away the hand, the wound was plainly seen; but let the hand go, and it returned to its place with force, as if it had a resort or spring to force it to its proper place. I pulled the hand away several times, and the nerves and tendons were so strong that the hand returned with a lusty clap upon the wound. There likewise they shewed us the corps of a physician (of their acquaintance), which, when they put a clean piece of paper into one hand and a pen into the other, when he stood in such a posture as if he had seriously been a-writing a dose or prescription. The monks told us that in one vault the principals of their order stood all in a row, in the habit of the order, according to their seniority. They proffered me the whole body of a little child, which I should out of curiosity have accepted of, if I had then been homeward bound; but I was then outward bound for the grand tour of France (or circle, as they call it), and so again into Italy.

(45, 46). Item, two cylinders, with their wooden boxes,—the one of steel, which is most usual in England; the other of foyled isinglass, which I met with often in High Germany, from whence I brought this. The isinglass having a foyle of quicksilver and pewter put behind it, like a lookingglass, will afterward easily bend to the cylindrical piece of wood that you would fasten it to, and rendereth an excellent lustre, better than the steel. There are several uses of them in opticks. I used them with some several pictures, which are artificially painted like the greatest confusion of irregular lines and lineaments that may be. But, a cylinder being placed upon the square fitted for its pedestal, all the reflections of that seemingly confused work meet in the cylinder, and make a well-shaped, very handsome picture, in its due points and proportions. As to one of these cylinders belongeth, from the confusion on the plain, in the cylinder, an emperor on horseback on a white horse (which I brought from Rome, but they may be had in England).

The other, that I out of curiosity used to imploy, was in a very pretty experiment that I learned at Nurimberg and Augsberg, in High Germany, in making, by reflection of the sun’s beam, as fair a rainbow as ever was seen in the sky, to be seen in a dark room—the darker the better—which I have done hundreth of times before many of quality, who have taken delight to see it. It is best done where there are close wooden shuts to the windows. It is done thus: the room being made very dark, there must be left only an auger hole, where the sunbeam may come clearly in through the shut,—the kesment being taken away, or a pannel of glass broken for the purpose, that the sun may be clear. Then lay to that hole a common prism or triangular artificial crystal, that casteth all kind of colours; the sun, without it, casteth through the hole a round spot of light, either upon the next wall, or on the floor; then that triangular crystal, being put to the hole, turneth that sunbeam into a round spot of divers glorious colours; then put a couple of small nails for the prism to rest upon, and keep that glorious spot; which done, take a cylinder, and hold it about a foot distance from the coloured spot, full in the sunbeam, or at what distance you find most convenient, and that will cast the reflections of that spot all round about the dark room, on the seeling and walls, in as perfectly various colours as ever you saw the rainbow. Upon which there happened a pretty passage to me once, which happened at Utrecht, which was this: there lived one Myn Here Johnson,[*] Cornelius Jansen “in 1636 and the next following years resided with Sir Arnold Braems, a Flemish merchant at Bridge [Place], near Canterbury.” (Dallaway’s note in Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting in England, ii. 10, Lond. 1828.) His portrait of Dean Bargrave is in the Deanery at Canterbury, and was lent for the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866. an extraordinary eminent painter, of my former acquaintance in England. I showed him this artificial rainbow; he asked me how long I could keep it; I told him that I could keep it 2 or 3 hours: “Then," saith he, “I will send for my pallat of coulors, and draw it, for I have binn after endeavouring to draw one in the fields, but it vanished before I could finish it.” Upon which I laughed. He asked me why I laughed; I told him that he should see anon why I laughed, but assured him that I could keep the rainbow 2 or 3 hours; upon which he sent a servant for his pallat of coulors, and, being come, he tempered them to his purpose in the light. Then I darkened the room, but he could not see to paint, at which I laughed again, and I told him his error, which was, that he could not see to paint in the dark, and that I could not keep the rainbow in the light, at which he laughed also heartily, and he missed his design.

Item, a picture in a frame, of confused work; but a cylinder being placed on the square for its pedestal, there you shall see an emperor on horseback, and, if you moove your head up and down, the horse will seem to trott.

(48), An optick instrument of wood, turned round, and hollow within, and blacked, which serveth instead of a dark room; the small optick glass at the little end casting the shadows or figures and coulors of all outward objects upon a piece of clean paper fastened in with a hoop at the great end, with a covering over it, having a round hole in the middle, through which you may see all the reflections of the outward object as plain as may be; so that one may design them or paint them on the paper as they are represented, reversed, or their heels upward, and then, taking the paper off, it may be turned to the object’s right posture, and not upside down. But the sun must shine clear upon the outward objects when they are to be fully and well represented, otherwise they are but dull. If the paper be very clean, and oyled over with good oyle, the species and colours are more perfect. The objects that are in motion, and those various, look the prettiest on the paper. As I happened to see it set against a large market place at Vienna, in Austria (the Emperor’s court), where I bought it, the busy people in the market, and all their several coloured clothes, both of men and women, made me stand still and wonder what it meant. I went by the shop several times on purpose to see it, and at last I went into the shop and bought it, the owner showing me the use of it. With this instrument you may see the jackdaws fly about Bell Harry steeple,[*] i. e. the central tower of Canterbury Cathedral. when the sun shines, in any room of your house that hath a window that way.

(49). Item, a larger circular optick glass, about 4 inches diameter, made almost for the same purpose with the former, to receive outward specieses into a dark room; only this glass representeth them 4 times as bigg as the other, and at a much farther distance, which must be always observed as to the reception of the specieses. As this glass in a dark room, being placed to the hole, will render the reflexed species of the outward object full and large at a good distance, on a sheet of paper, or a fine napkin, or a large tablecloth, all the houses, windows, chimnies, trees, steeples, &c. that the sun shineth upon, and may be seen through the oager,[*] i. e. auger. all will be fairly represented on that paper or tablecloth or napkin.

I bought this glass of Myn Here Westleius, an eminent man for optics at Nurenburg, and it cost me 3 pistolls, which is about 50s English. The gentleman spoke bitterly to me against Father Kercherius, a Jesuit at Rome (of my acquaintance), saying that it had cost him above a thousand pounds to put his optic speculations in practice, but he found his principles false, and shewed me a great basket of glasses of his failings. He shewed me wonderful strange glasses, some oval, some round, some square, some convex, some concave, which produced strange deceptions of the sight, unspeakable. As I well remember, when I put forth my hand to one glass, there came an arm and a hand out of the glass, as long as mine; and when our hands met, I seemingly could put finger to finger, palm to palm; and when I went to clasp hands together, I grasped nothing but air. Then, drawing my sword, and at a farther distance thrusting the point towards the glass, out from the glass came a sword and an arm, as to my sight, into the room; and we met, point to point, two or 3 paces from the wall, into the chamber which was strange to me; and at lenght length he made my whole person seemingly to come out of the glass into the room to meet me.

Another large glass he had, which, being hanged at one side of the room, and a fair perspective picture of the inside of a church, with its arches and pillars, hanged at the other, at a due distance, the species do so strangely come out from the glass that you seem to be walking in a church. Remove that picture, and place in its room a fair garden, with oranges and lemon trees, and fountains and walks, &c., and by the reflex of that glass, in the middest of the room, one seemeth to walk in a garden, and so in a grove, &c. For these glasses he asked me, for one 200, for the other 150, pistolls; and I think I should have given him his money, if my quality and purse had had a proportion suitable for such a purchase.

(50). Item, another optick glass, sowed into a piece of paceboard, to hang at a hole in a dark room, to the same purpose as the former.

(51). Westleius, of Neurenburg in High Germany, his optick wooden eye, which is only to set in the light into a darkened room, for the same use as formerly, only, as the sun removeth, so the wooden eye may be turned about to the sun, to keep the beams the longer on the optick glass.

(52). Item, a rare antiquity and curiosity: two Chinese books, in quarto, printed in the Chyna language upon I know not what material,—I think either silk, or rather on the barks of trees,[*] It is the ordinary Chinese paper. —every leaf being double, and having in every page an ill-favoured design or drauft of picture. They were left me as a legacy and curiosity by one that had formerly binn my fellow traveller.

(53). Item, some shells of the strange dieülle musell, bred in the heart of a stone. Thus one, or rather several, times at Rochell I walked out to the sea-side near the Dige, where I met with fellows who with beetles and axes and wedges were by the sea-side, as the tide went off, a cleaving of great stones. I asked them what they were doing and what they meant to cleave those stones. Their answer was, that they worked for their living, and that they were searching for dieüles, that is, for a sort of muscel shell-fish in those stones. I stood by, and saw then that, as the stone cleft, they found 1, 2, 3, or 4, some bigger some lesser. I asked them whether that they were good to eat. With that they ate them raw, as one doth an oyster, and I found them good meat, and afterwards sent them to our lodgings; and I saw them several times in the market to be sold, being very good well-relished fish. The stones from which they are taken are full of holes, according to their proportion, some bigg some lesser.

(54). Item, an Indian tobacco pipe of leather to wind about one's arm, with a wooden pipe at the end of it, to be cleaned by washing it.

(55). Several pairs of horns of the wild mountain goats which the High Dutch call gemps, the Italians camuchi, the French shammois, from whence we have that leather. I had them amongst the Alps, the people telling me strange stories of the creature, what strange leaps they would take amongst the crags of the rocks, and how, to break a fall, they will hang by the horns, and, when they have taken breath, they unhook themselves and take another leap at a venture, and sometimes they will have great falls without any hurt, they still lighting upon their horns. Some of these horns are polished, and serve for several uses.

(56). A prohibited Venetian dark lanthorn, with a concave piece of steel at the back of the inside, which must be always kept very bright, and a convex half-globe of a crystaline glass on the outside; then a piece of wax candle being put in between them, the reverberation of the light from the steel through the crystal sendeth forth such a radiant light in a dark night that you may read anything at a great distance. It hath bin a murthering instrument with a pocket pistol and a poisoned stiletto—the revengeful party meeting and watching his adversary in the streets, on a sudden casteth such a dazeling brightness in his eye that he is astonished, whilst the other useth his instruments to kill him.

(57). Item, a Venetian stiletto poisoned without poison; that is, it is as bad as poisoned by reason that these oval little holes worked on the body of the steel of the stiletto maketh it give an uncurable wound, by reason that a point or tent, with its oils, balsalms, or otherwise curing salves, cannot reach the inward scars and inequalities of the dagger’s hollow figures, and so it is impossible to cure such a wound.

(58). Item, a cravat, a shass or girdle, and a small pair of gaiters of curious work, by the inhabitants of the north-west (whether passage or no passage) of America, in the West Indies, made of porcupine quills very artificiously. In Italy there are butchers’ shops particularly for venison, in which shops are every week hanged up store of these porcupines; but we foreigners did not much approve of the meat. The cravat, &c., with divers other things, were sent me by one Mr. Tymothy Couley, now a marchant in London, by way of gratuity, he being one of the 162 slaves that I redeemed from Argeers, when I went thither by King Charles 2 commission and 10,000lb of hierarchical money, 1662, for that purpose. Amongst the chains of the redeemed I kept only this man’s, which I have now by me, and intend to have it hanged up over my grave in memorandum.

(59). Item, a pair of red leather pleyted buskins and 2 pairs of sleepers, with iron on the soles, such as the great ones—the Bashaes, the Agaàs, the Yabashawes, and Bulgabashaes—wear at Argeers.

(60). The picture in little of Shaban Agaà il Grand d' Algeers, or the King of Argeers, to whom I delivered his Maties (Charles II.) credential letter, and with whom I had chiefly to do in points of difficulty, though I bought slave by slave from each particular Turkish patron, as one buyeth horses in Smithfield. A poor painter, an Italian slave, stood privately to draw me this picture at several times when I had audience of Shaban Agaà. It is ill work, but the clothes and mode is like him, as he (and as all the country doeth,) sat cross-legged on a Turkey carpet on a bench, I sitting at the turning of the bench by him, with my hat on, in my clerical habit; I finding him mostly very courteous. But in a 500lb business, that he would have had me pay for slaves that had made their escape, we were both very hot, and had like to have broken the peace, but at lenght length my reasons prevailed. But at the end of all, when all the slaves were redeemed and sent on board his Maties man-of-war that attended us, it was a thousand to one but that the peace between us had binn broken, and I and my fellow commissioner, Dr. Selleck, had bin made slaves. It was but a greine in a pair of golden scales, whether aye or no—they having that night brought in an Englishman as a prize; but by God’s blessing, and much difficulty, I played my part so well with threatening, that we got off. But poor consul Browne paid for it; for we were no sooner gone from their coasts but they broke the peace, and took all the English as formerly.

This Mr. Browne, the consul, went over in the same man-of-war with us, and we dieted and lay at his house. He had formerly lived long among them, and had their Lingua Franca perfectly. However, we were no sooner gone but they seized on all he had, shaved his head, and made him a slave, where he helped to draw timber and stones to a fortification, receiving so many blows a day with a bull’s nerve, until he was beaten to death, and his body cast out upon a dunghill; which doubtless had binn our fortune if God had not binn pleased to bless us for the good work that we had done.

All the difficulties lay upon me, by reason that my brother commissioner had never binn beyond the seas, nor could speak a word of their language, and so understood not his danger until it was over.[*] On the back of the drawing (which is on parchment), is the following inscription: "Shaban Aga il Grand d’ ALGEERS. The King of Argeers, to whom I delivered his Maties letters credential, when in 1662 I went his Maties commissioner for the redemption of the English captives there with hierarchical and cathedral money, with which I redeemed and brought home with me all, viz. 162 slaves. John Bargrave, Gent., of Kent. Canon of Christ Church, Canterbury. An Italian slave, a painter, drew me this rude piece at Argeers, very like as to face and habit. The copies of which in large I gave, one to his Matie Charles the Second, who hanged it in his private closet; another I gave to my patron, Archbishop Juxon; a third to Archbishop Sheldon; and a fourth I kept for myself, in memorandum of that Christian and noble imploy, 1662.”

(61). Item, a fair book in folio, with the effigies of Alexander the 7th, and all the College of Cardinals at that time—An° Dni 1658—to my knowledge very well cut, and exceeding like. I had occasion to have audience with several of them, and have writ what authors say of them in my hand.

(62). Item, a large folio in Italian, of medals, by Don Antonio Agostini, arcivescovo di Tarracona,—full of cuts of medals, with the reverse, writt by way of dialogue, In Roma.

(63). Item, a small turned instrument of wood, of about a handful, with a turned furrow in it for a cord that will bear a man’s weight; it being useful in time of war for a prisoner to make his escape, by sliding down by a wall of any hight on a cord that shall not gall the hands, but the person may slide faster or softlier as he pleaseth, by griping or loosening this instrument. It was given me at Augsburg by a High-Dutch captain.

(64). Item, a manuscript in Italian, in folio, being the conclaves or intrigues of the elections of 13 Popes, beginning at Giulius the 3d, and ending with Paulus Quintus; bound up only alla rustico, as the Italians call it, in pastboard. At the end, Di Roma, iixx Maggio, MDCV.

Five of them are translated into English, in loose sheets of paper.

(65). Item, a little manuscript in 5 sheets, unbound,[*] Nos. 65 and 66 are now bound together. See the Introduction. Supplimenti d’alcuni Cardinali, che sono omessi nella STATERA in Stampa.

(66). Item, a little manuscript in 6 sheets, unbound, Instruttione del Sigr Balij di Valence, Ambr del Re Christianissimo, al suo Successore.

(67). To hang upon my cabinet. My own picture upon copper, in little and in seculo, between my nephew and my neighbour, drawn at Siena, 1647, by the hand of Sigr. Mattio Bolognini, as written on the back side.

(68). To hang upon my cabinet. My own picture upon copper, in little and in seculo, drawn at Rome by a servant of my good friend Sigr. Giovanni Battista Caninij, an° 1650, the year of Jubely, as it is written on the back side.