Montaigne arrived in Venice in 1580, and his remarks about the city and its inhabitants three centuries ago are quaint and entertaining. He was somewhat disappointed in the show places, but greatly interested in the people. He recorded that he hired for himself a gondola, which he was entitled to the use of, night and day, for two lire _per diem_, about seventeen sous, as he explained, including the boatman. Provisions here he found as dear as at Paris; but then, in other respects, he considered it the cheapest place in the world to live in, for the train of attendants which one required elsewhere was here altogether useless, everybody going about by himself, which made great saving in clothes; and, moreover, one had no occasion for horses. His stay here was very short. He said of Italy generally that he had never seen a country in which there were so few pretty women. And the inns he found far less convenient than those of France or Germany. The provisions were not half so plentiful, and not nearly so well dressed. The houses, too, in Italy were very inferior; there were no good rooms, and the large windows had no glass or other protection against the weather; the bedrooms were mere cabins, and the beds wretched pallets, running upon casters, with a miserable canopy over them; “and Heaven help him who cannot lie hard!” Milton was in Venice in the months of April and May, 1639, but the only incident of his stay here which he recorded is that he shipped to England a number of books which he had collected in different parts of Italy; and some of these, we are told, by one who saw them later in the lodging-house in St. Bride’s Church-yard, London, were curious and rare, “including a chest or two of choice music-books from the best masters flourishing then in Italy.” Among the volumes which Milton bought and studied in Venice was a history of the town, in Latin, printed by the Elzevirs in 1631. It contains the folding-plates of the Rialto, and of the interior of the Council Chamber of the Doges, which are reproduced here; and the well-preserved copy of the same work, bought behind the Cathedral by [Illustration: THE RIALTO BRIDGE. AS SHYLOCK KNEW IT] the present chronicler, for a few lire, he highly prizes, as presenting views of the public places of Venice contemporary with _The Merchant of Venice_ and _Othello_, and as, perhaps, having passed here through Milton’s own hands. It was the latest and most authentic chronicle of its kind when Venice received Milton on the bosoms of her canals.