Lastly, let us consider how great a commodity of doctrine exists in books, how easily, how secretly, how safely they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters that instruct us without rods and ferulas, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble, if you are ignorant, they can not laugh at you. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: From the "Philobiblon," a treatise on books, translated from the original Latin into English in 1852 by John Englis. The Latin text and a new translation by Andrew J. West were printed by the Grolier Club of New York in 1887.] [Footnote 2: The reference is to Julius Caesar.] [Footnote 3: The Roman Consul, general and ambassador to Pyrrhus in 280, who was noted for inflexible honesty.] [Footnote 4: The best-known work of Ptolemy of Alexandria, astronomer and mathematician, who lived in the first half of the second century.] SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE Reputed author of a book of "Travels" of the fourteenth century, a compilation intended as a guide to pilgrims in the Holy Land, and based upon works by William of Boldensele (1336) and Friar Odoric of Pordenone (1330). I. THE ROUTE FROM ENGLAND TO CONSTANTINOPLE[5] He that will pass over the sea and come to land, to go to the city of Jerusalem, he may wend many ways, both on sea and land, after the country that he cometh from; for many of them come to one end. But trow not that I will tell you all the towns, and cities and castles that men shall go by; for then should I make too long a tale; but all only some countries and most principal steads that men shall go through to go the right way. First, if a man come from the west side of the world, as England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, or Norway, he may, if that he will, go through Almayne and through the kingdom of Hungary, that marches to the land of Polayne, and to the land of Pannonia,[6] and so to Silesia.