the bishop, and also a mighty large castle that was built with brick,
with three walls, and three great trenches, so strong that it was
impossible for any prince's power to win it; then he saw a church
wherein was buried Simon and the bishop of Popo. Their tombs are of most
sumptuous stone-marble, closed and joined together with great bars of
iron. From thence he departed to Paris, where he liked well the academy;
and what place or kingdom soever fell in his mind, the same he visited.

He came from Paris to Mentz, where the river of Maine falls into the
Rhine, notwithstanding he tarried not long there, but went into
Campania, in the kingdom of Neapoly, in which he saw an innumerable sort
of cloisters, nunneries, and churches, and great houses of stone, the
streets fair and large, and straight forth from one end of the town to
the other all alike, and all the pavement of the city was of brick, and
the more it rained in the town the fairer the streets were. There saw he
the tomb of Virgil, and the highway that he cut through the mighty hill
of stone in one night, the whole length of an English mile, where he saw
the number of galleys and argosies that lay there at the city head, the
windmill that stood in the water, the castle in the water, and the
houses above the water, where many galleys might ride most safely from
rain or wind; then he saw the castle on the hill over the town, and many
monuments therein, also the hill called Vesuvius, whereon groweth all
the Greekish wine and most pleasant sweet olives.

From thence he came to Venice, whereat he wondered not a little to see a
city so famously built standing in the sea, where through every street
the water came in such largeness that great ships and barques might pass
from one street to another, having yet a way on both sides the water
whereon men and horses might pass. He marvelled also how it was possible
so much victuals to be found in the town, and so good and cheap,
considering that for a whole league nothing grew near the same. He
wondered not a little at the fairness of St. Mark's Place, and the
sumptuous church standing thereon, called St. Mark; how all the pavement
was set with coloured stones, and all the rood or loft of the church
double gilded over.

Leaving this, he came to Padua, beholding the manner of their academy,
which is called the mother or nurse of Christendom; there heard he the
doctors, and saw most of the monuments of the town, entered his n