can have more excellent and greater diversity of stuff for building
than we may have in England, if ourselves could so like of it. But such,
alas! is our nature, that not our own but other men's do most of all
delight us; and for desire of novelty we oft exchange our finest cloth,
corn, tin, and wools for halfpenny cockhorses for children, dogs of wax
(or of cheese), twopenny tabers, leaden swords, painted feathers, gewgaws
for fools, dog-tricks for disards, hawk's hoods, and such like trumpery,
whereby we reap just mockage and reproach (in other countries). I might
remember here our pits for millstones, that are to be had in divers places
of our country, as in Anglesea (Kent), also at Queen-hope of blue greet,
of no less value than the Colaine, yea, than the French stones: our
grindstones for hardware men. Our whetstones are no less laudable than
those of Crete and Lacedaemonia, albeit we use no oil with them, as they
did in those parts, but only water, as the Italians and Narians do with
theirs: whereas they that grow in Cilicia must have both oil and water
laid upon them, or else they make no edge. There also are divided either
into hard greet, as the common that shoemakers use, or the soft greet
called hones, to be had among the barbers, and those either black or
white, and the rub or brickle stone which husbandmen do occupy in the
whetting of their scythes.

In like manner slate of sundry colours is everywhere in manner to be had,
as is the flint and chalk, the shalder and the pebble. Howbeit for all
this we must fetch them still from far, as did the Hull men their stones
out of Iceland, wherewith they paved their town for want of the like in
England: or as Sir Thomas Gresham did when he bought the stones in
Flanders wherewith he paved the Burse. But as he will answer
(peradventure) that he bargained for the whole mould and substance of his
workmanship in Flanders, so the Hullanders or Hull men will say how that
stock-fish is light loading, and therefore they did balance their vessels
with these Iceland stones to keep them from turning over in their so
tedious a voyage.

Sometimes also they find precious stones (though seldom), and some of them
perfectly squared by nature, and much like unto the diamond found of late
in a quarry of marble at Naples, which was so perfectly pointed as if all
the workmen in the world had consulted about the performance of that
workmanship. I know that these reports unto some will seem