uld venture into Italy, or any
other country where the Romish religion was established in full power,
without the danger of being seized by the Inquisition!

Other dangers, by sea and by land, from corsairs and banditti, including
too the chances of war and of pestilence, were so great in that age, that
it was not unusual for men when they set out upon their travels to put
out a sum upon their own lives, which if they died upon the journey was
to be the underwriter's gain, but to be repaid if they returned, within
such increase as might cover their intervening expenses. The chances
against them seem to have been considered as nearly three to one. But
danger, within a certain degree, is more likely to provoke adventurers
than to deter them.

_Sir Thomas More_.--There thou hast uttered a comprehensive truth. No
legislator has yet so graduated his scale of punishment as to ascertain
that degree which shall neither encourage hope nor excite the audacity of
desperate guilt. It is certain that there are states of mind in which
the consciousness that he is about to play for life or death stimulates a
gamester to the throw. This will apply to most of those crimes which are
committed for cupidity, and not attended with violence.

_Montesinos_.--Well then may these hazards have acted as incentives where
there was the desire of honour, the spirit of generous enterprise, or
even the love of notoriety. By the first of these motives Pietro della
Valle (the most romantic in his adventures of all true travellers) was
led abroad, the latter spring set in motion my comical countryman, Tom
Coriat, who by the engraver's help has represented himself at one time in
full dress, making a leg to a courtesan at Venice, and at another
dropping from his rags the all-too lively proofs of prolific poverty.

Perhaps literature has never been so directly benefited by the spirit of
trade as it was in the seventeenth century, when European jewellers found
their most liberal customers in the courts of the East. Some of the best
travels which we possess, as well as the best materials for Persian and
Indian history, have been left us by persons engaged in that trade. From
that time travelling became less dangerous and more frequent in every
generation, except during the late years when Englishmen were excluded
from the Continent by the military tyrant whom (with God's blessing on a
rightful cause) we have beaten from his imperial throne. And now