a matter of bluff. Navagero, in Spain early in the sixteenth century, ambassador though he was, had to pay duties even on the rings on his fingers. Passports, for one purpose or another, may be said to have been as much the rule then as they have since become the exception; an Englishman must pay five shillings for leave to travel and another five shillings if he wished to take his horse with him. A Frenchman at Milan speaks of getting a passport, stating his destination and the colour of his hair; and so on. But few mention such expenses being entailed as does one Italian,[137] leaving Dover in 1606. Apparently he had to pay for separate passports for each of his suite as well as himself, as these cost forty reals. The "real of eight" was nearly equal to five shillings English. The captain of the vessel demanded copies which "cost very dear" and the harbour-keeper, furthermore, who had exacted two giuli [six shillings], (each person?) on arrival, required double at departure. Guide-books seem to have been from two to four times the price of Baedekers, a minor item, but considerable, like food and lodging. It may seem, at first sight, as if food and lodging were far from minor items, and that truly, of course, if only the total expenditure is considered. But in considering, as is being done here, relative cost only, that is, the cost of travel in so far as it has altered since three centuries ago, it has to be borne in mind that the average cost of food and shelter never alters; it is only standards of living that alter. If any one took the average price of meals, say, in Europe then and average prices now, and showed a difference of net cost between them, his calculations must either be based on misleading information, or else would prove that the figure he was multiplying with to equate values was a wrong one. This, of course, refers to necessaries; luxuries must be ruled out for two reasons: first, all attempts to fix a standard or strike an average breaks down for lack of a basis; second, they do not test what any one is called upon to spend but only how much he can spend if he is fool enough to try. Thus, for example, when Montaigne tells us that the charges at the "Vaso d'Oro" at Rome would be about twenty crowns [£35] a month, we may conclude that if we ascertain what the average charges would be for the same accommodation at a first-rate hotel to-day, it is a more reasonable plan to take the difference as the difference between their money-values and ours than to accept a surplus in either, according to the usually accepted multiplying figure, as defining an increase or decrease in hotel charges.