The amount of attention given to the other islands of the Mediterranean, Sicily, which may be considered part of Italy, excepted, might well be represented by saying nothing about them, but Cardinal de Retz's remark about Port Mahon, Minorca, is too characteristic of his age to be passed over; he praises it as the most beautiful haven of the Mediterranean, so beautiful that its scenery surpassed even that employed at Paris for the opera! CHAPTER IV CHRISTIAN EUROPE PART I EUROPEAN EUROPE From the report of divers curious and experienced persons I had been assured there was little more to be seen in the rest of the civil world after Italy, France and the Low Countries, but plain and prodigious barbarism. Evelyn, _Diary_ (1645). The route of the Average Tourist being determined by the considerations above-mentioned, he was naturally directed to those countries whose situation enabled them to influence the course of events in his fatherland, whose development and conditions contained the most pertinent lessons for him as a man and as a statesman, and whose climate, accessibility, and inhabitants were such as hindered travellers least. These countries were: Italy, France, the United Provinces (_i. e._, Holland), the Empire, the Spanish Netherlands (corresponding to Belgium), England, Poland. This order is that in which they would probably have appeared to arrange themselves according to their importance for the purposes under consideration. The omission of England in the chapter heading is due, of course, to Evelyn having started thence; of the Empire and Poland, to the date at which he is writing, near the close of the Thirty Years' War; a date which, while within the period with which this book has to deal, is later by nearly half a century than the central date, 1600, to which all its undated statements should be taken as referring.