Elizabethan England, on the other hand, was rendered still more remarkable by possessing no fortresses at all. Two exceptions, Berwick and the Tower of London, served but to call attention to the rule, the Tower in particular, whose out-of-date character in the matter of defences greatly amused connoisseurs. One Venetian ambassador, indeed, with this fact in his mind, together with the miscellaneous character of its contents, describes it as not so much a fortress as a "sicuro deposito"—a safe-deposit.[46] The peacefulness which brought about this state of things is still borne witness to by the large glazed windows on the ground floors of Elizabethan country-houses, but no foreigner remarks on that in the presence of the other more striking points that testified to it then. Foscarini, the successor of the ambassador just referred to, had occasion to traverse the length of England in 1613. Writing home[47] he remarks on five facts concerning the country he passes through which seemed particularly noteworthy: (1) No unfruitful land throughout; (2) Every eight or ten miles a town comparable to a good Italian town (this was on the post-road to Scotland); (3) Number of navigable rivers; (4) and of beautiful churches; (5) No mercenary soldiers. To make it clear why the visitor should be so specially struck by these features, it is necessary to recall how differently matters stood abroad. During this period two thirty-year civil wars broke out in Europe, one in each half of the period, the first in France while the Empire was at peace, the second in the Empire while France was at peace. Between these two came twenty years of comparative quiet, but never a year when war was not to be seen in progress, or its effects still horribly new, in the course of a Continental tour. Incidentally, it may be pointed out that this peculiarly even distribution of peace and war gives the writings of travellers in Europe at this time striking value in relation to the effects of war and peace, not only in themselves but also as to their special characteristics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. No tourist came into contact with both wars; almost every tourist saw something of one district under the influence of war or of peace, while some other is seeing another district in an opposite state. There remains, therefore, in their writings, a continuous comment on each other; so continuous and so unconscious as to leave no room for this or that man's bias to influence the general impression.