As regards applied science, again, we find Evelyn writing of the harbour-works at Genoa, "of all the wonders of Italy, for the art and nature of the design, nothing parallels this." Now Evelyn was certainly not a man to underrate the rest of the wonders of Italy. As for comparisons outside of Italy, all Europe had by his time settled down to compete in the application of science to every-day life. And as to the products of the soil, is it not probable that if, nowadays, Europeans left the soil to take care of itself, and the day-labourer to take care of the seed and the preparation of the product, Italy would regain the first place as a producer of luxuries? Such points as these, just a few that have chanced to suggest themselves in the course of reading for other purposes, are merely put forward as typical of the relations existing between Italy and the rest of Europe; the Italians themselves admitted their own superiority by the slightly contemptuous meaning that attached itself to their word "Transalpini," and very rare is it to find one of these "Transalpini" taking the view that Sir Philip Sidney and Fynes Moryson did, that the first characteristic of Italy was pretentiousness. On the contrary, it was assumed that little but experience could be so easily, or so satisfactorily, acquired elsewhere. Diverse forms of government, at least, could not be met with elsewhere in the same variety within such narrow limits. The south was what they termed a "province," _i. e._, a dependency held down by force, belonging to Spain; so, too, was Milan, with its surroundings. In the centre was a monarch, the Pope, who was both elected and "absolute," a term which had a specialised meaning, that of power unlimited except by the extent to which the holder made himself disliked. Further north were free cities, Lucca, Genoa; six hereditary principalities, Tuscany, Mantua, Urbino, Savoy, Modena, Parma; and lastly, the Republic of Venice with its miniature empire in Lombardy. And concerning Venice, there is this to be noted, that it was exhibiting solidity combined with elasticity to a degree all the more astonishing in "an impossible city in an impossible place"; which gave it a position not unlike that of England to-day, namely, that peculiarities of its "constitution" received an even greater degree of respect than they were entitled to and tended to be imitated by constitution-formulators of the period who expected to reproduce what had been achieved by geography and a national temperament, by means of reproducing some of the formulas that the latter had adopted. All of which was of great interest to the Average Tourist; and in consequence, if you happen to be reading one of his accounts of a tour, at the first mention of the word "Doge," skip twelve pages.