Others, too, like Montaigne, without setting out to write guide-books, have guidance to offer as a result of experience of life and travel; sometimes in letters, sometimes in chance remarks. Letters of this kind which have survived are many, but so much alike are they as to suggest that the fathers shrunk from explaining to the sons how they themselves had made the most of their time and fell back on unacknowledged quotations from a Gruberus. Of the few frank ones the two best are by Sir Philip Sidney to his brother, and by the ninth Earl of Northumberland to his son Algernon.[22] Although the latter is nearly as encyclopædic as Plotius, it is so merely in the way of suggestion, discussing only motives and ideas and insisting on his son's freedom of choice, in general as well as in detail; with one or two remarks added that would have scandalised the guide-book writer, but leaven the whole of the letter. It is especially interesting as showing how the idea of travel as a factor in life brought out the best of a man who was a failure at home from a day-by-day point of view. As for chance remarks: one likens travelling to death in so far as it means separation from friends, letters, moreover, yielding as little satisfaction as prayers; and whereas the wise say that death is the entrance to a happier life, there is the opposite prospect with travel, so that it has all the disadvantages of hell as well as of death. And here may follow a few more remarks of theirs, chosen as suggestive of the characteristics of sixteenth-century travel in so far as it differs from our own, not neglecting proverbs:— A traveller has need of a falcon's eye, an ass's ears, a monkey's face, a merchant's words, a camel's back, a hog's mouth, a deer's feet. And the traveller to Rome—the back of an ass, the belly of a hog, and a conscience as broad as the king's highway. Line your doublet with taffetie; taffetie is lice-proof. Never journey without something to eat in your pocket, if only to throw to dogs when attacked by them. Carry a note-book and red crayon (_i. e._, lead pencils were not in regular use). When going by coach, avoid women, especially old women; they always want the best places. At sea, remove your spurs; sailors make a point of stealing them from those who are being sea-sick. Keep your distance from them in any case; they are covered with vermin. In an inn-bedroom which contains big pictures, look behind the latter to see they do not conceal a secret door, or a window. Women should not travel at all and married men not much. CHAPTER III ON THE WATER Chi può venire per mare non è lontano. Paolo Sarpi, 1608.[23]