No Protestant who reached Dresden would miss Wittenberg, but the contrast must have been painful; poor and very dirty; the dwellers therein mainly students, prostitutes, and pigs, recalling the verses in use concerning Angers— Basse ville, hauts clochers, Riches putaines, pauvres escoliers. Leipzig was in favour for the purity of its German and Munich for pleasure, but Prague was another disappointment in spite of the Emperor living there; few stone houses and the wooden ones rough, and so filthy that the saying ran that the Turks would never take it despite the feebleness of its fortifications, because it was so well-guarded by its stenches; much as a Frenchman remarked at this time of Massa, between Genoa and Pisa, that it had a castle, but its chief defence was its fleas. Vienna was likewise far too well defended to attract visitors; a frontier-town against the Turks, always garrisoned by mercenaries and its streets unsafe in consequence. To go on to the Spanish Netherlands, they were bound to be passed and re-passed in the course of the work of Europe, for geographical reasons, but still more so as a storm-centre of European politics. Nevertheless, the tourist, however serious, did not stay there long. The viceroy's business was generalship, and consequently there was no settled court: little to note, in fact, but the Spanish infantry at work and the effects of that; towns in ruins, dwindling trade. Yet the localisation of the war was intermittent enough not to interfere with the travellers from Upper Germany making a practice of reaching France through this district, according to Zinzerling, rather than direct, a habit resulting not only from the attractions that remained to Flemish towns, but still more from the direct route through Burgundy having become a highway of German mercenaries into France. [Illustration: GATE OF ST. GEORGE, ANTWERP] Moreover, no one who knew his business as a sight-seer omitted Antwerp. Trade and political importance had for some time been deserting it until it suggested to Howell in 1619 "a disconsolate Widow, or a superannuated Virgin that hath lost her Lover," but in 1600 it had not passed a state of mellowness without stagnation, with traces of its greatness fresh. Every visitor repeats the same idea—"the most beautiful town in Europe"; and not in the same formula, as would result from the idea being a guide's commonplace, but in words drawn from his own experience: "as seen from the cathedral tower the most beautiful town after Constantinople," says one; or Lithgow, extolling Damascus, "the most beautiful city in Asia," compares it, for every respect save style of architecture, to "that matchless pattern and mirror of beauty, Antwerp." It would seem to have been the first town to turn its fortifications into promenades, laid out in walks and planted with trees.[45] The citadel, too, was the finest out of Italy, on the word of a Venetian ambassador.