When Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was here in 1716, she described Ratisbon as being full of “Envoys from different States,” and said that it might have been a very pleasant place but for the “important _piques_, which divide the town almost into as many parties as there are families ... the foundation of these everlasting disputes turns entirely upon rank, place, and the title of Excellency, which they all pretend to, and, what is very hard, will give it to nobody. For my part I could not forbear advising them (for the public good) to give the title of Excellency to everybody, which would include the receiving it from everybody; but the very mention of such a dishonourable peace was received with as much indignation, as Mrs. Blackaire did the motion of a reference.” In some of the churches--she does not specify which--Lady Mary was shown some curious relics, for she says: “I have been to see the churches here and had the permission of touching the relics, which was never suffered in places where I was not known. I had, by this privilege, the opportunity of making an observation, which I doubt not might have been made in all the other churches, that the emeralds and rubies which they show round their relics and images are most of them false; though they tell you that many of the Crosses and Madonnas, set round with these stones, have been the gifts of Emperors and other great Princes. I don’t doubt indeed but they were at first jewels of value; but the good fathers have found it convenient to apply them to other uses, and the people are just as well satisfied with pieces of glass amongst these relics. They showed me a prodigious claw set in gold, which they called the claw of a Griffin, and I could not forbear asking the Reverend Priest that showed it whether the Griffin was a Saint. The question almost put him beside his gravity; but he answered they only kept it as a curiosity. I was much scandalized at a large silver image of the _Trinity_, where the _Father_ is represented under the figure of a decrepit old man, holding in his arms the Son, fixed on the Cross, and the _Holy Ghost_, in the shape of a dove, hovering over him.” History has so much to say of Ratisbon that here we can but glance at some of the details of a place which we are told has been known by twenty different names. In Germany it is Regensburg, the town situated at the point where the Regen joins the Danube, while we still know it by its old latinized name which has been said to indicate that it was recognized as a good landing place. This point is explained in some Latin lines quoted by Planché:-- “Inde Ratisbonæ vetus ex hoc nomen habenti Quod _bona_ sit _ratibus_, vel quod consuevit in illa _Ponere_ nauta _rates_.”