But to consider the foregoing instructions, and even these three "facts," on their humorous side only, is to miss much of their interest. Two, for instance, of these etymologies are but examples of what is not only continually coming into notice in books of this date, but is especially noticeable in guide-books and tourists' notes, in which latter the habit of mind of the time is more exactly mirrored in its daily attitude than in any other class of books. They exemplify the two sources of knowledge of antiquity, the two standards of comparison, then available: classical and biblical; of more nearly equal authority than they were before or have been since; and they were the only ones. So with the objects of enquiry: they are implied by that lack of reference books from which not only the tourist, but governments also, suffered; it is clear, for example, that in 1592 much elementary information was not at hand, even in manuscript, in England.[15] The Tsar, moreover, about this time addressed a letter to the "Governor of the High Signiory of Venice," his advisers thinking that Venice was governed by a nominee of the Pope; and Rivadeneyra, who was very well-informed about affairs English, says in his "Cisma de Inglaterra," written thirty years after the reform of the English currency under Elizabeth: "The gold and silver currency is not so pure nor so fine as it was before heresy entered into the kingdom, for in the time of Henry VIII and his children Edward and Elizabeth, it has been falsified and alloyed with other metals, and so the money is worth much less than it used to be." Camden again, who wrote his Annals of Elizabeth's Reign early in the next century to correct misconceptions to which foreign scholars were liable, thought it necessary, when he mentioned Dublin, to explain that it was the chief city of Ireland; and very reasonably, too, considering that one of Henry VIII's officials in Ireland wrote home: "Because the country called Leinster and the situation thereof is unknown to the King and his Council, it is to be understood that Leinster is the fifth part of Ireland."[16] And there was a certain gentleman at the court of King James I, supposed to be an authority on things Continental, who answered, when asked for information about Venice, that he could not give much because he had ridden post through it—and it was not till the questioner got there that he became aware that Venice was surrounded by water; just as the secretary of a Spanish duke in England writes that his master took ship from "Calais, because, England being an island, it cannot be approached by land."