One guesses from this letter that Heimbach was then in Amsterdam. It was there, at all events, that the two Atlases about which Milton enquired had been published or were in course of publication. That of John Jansen, called _Novus Atlas_, when completed in 1658, consisted of six folio volumes; the yet more magnificent _Geographia Blaeviana_, or Atlas of the geographer and printer John Blaeu, was not perfect till 1662, and then consisted of eleven volumes of very large folio. But various Atlases, or collections of maps in anticipation of the complete Atlas, had been on sale by Blaeu for ten or twelve years previously: e.g., from his own trade-catalogue in 1650, "Atlas, four volumes illuminated, bound after the best fashion, will cost 150 guldens," and "Belgia Foederata and Belgia Regia, two vols., white [uncoloured], 70 guldens, or illuminated 140 guldens." The gulden or Dutch florin was equal to 1_s._ 8_d._ English, so that the price of Blaeu's four volume Atlas of 1650 was £12 10_s._ To Milton in 1656 the price of the same, or of whatever other Atlas he had in view, was to be twenty florins less, i.e. about £11. It was much as if one were asked to give £38 for a book now; and no wonder that Milton hesitated.[1] [Footnote 1: The information about the prices of Blaeu's general Atlas in 1650 and his special Atlas of the two Belgiums in the same year is from a curious letter in the _Correspondence of the Earls of Ancram and Lothian_, edited for the Marquis of Lothian, in 1875, by Mr. David Laing (II. 256).]