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measure described his own. This young gentleman was Francis Afton, efq. and the letter he fent him was as follows.

SIR,

Trinity-college, Cambridge,
May 18, 1669.

1

"SINCE in your letter you give me so much liberty of fending my judgment about what may be to your advantage in travelling, I shall do it more freely than perhaps otherwife would have been decent. First, then, I will lay down fome general rules; moft of which, I believe, you have confidered already; but, if any of them be new to you, they may excufe the reft; if none at all, yet is my punishment more in writing than yours in reading.

"When you come into any

"I. Observe their humours.

fresh company,

"II. Secondly, fuit your own carriage thereto; by which infinuation you will make their converfe more free and open.

"III. Let your difcourfe be more in queries and doubtings, than peremptory affertions or difputings; it being much the defign of travellers to learn, not to teach. Befides, it will perfuade your acquaintance that you have the greater efteem of them, and fo make them more ready to communicate what they know to you; whereas, nothing fooner occafions

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difrefpect and quarrels than peremptoriness. You will find little or no advantage in feeming wifer, or much more ignorant, than your company.

IV. Seldom difcommend any thing, though never fo bad; or doe it but moderately, leaft you bee unexpectedly forced to an unhandfom retraction. It is fafer to commend any thing more than it deferves, than to difcommend a thing fo much as it deferves: for commendations meet not foe often with oppofitions, or at least are not usually so ill refented by men that think otherwife, as difcommendations; and you will infinuate into mens favour by nothing fooner than feeming to approve and commend what they like; but beware of doing it by a comparison.

"V. If you bee affronted, it is better, in a forraine country, to pafs it by in filence, and with a jeft, tho' with fome difhonour, than to endeavour revenge; for, in the first case, your credit's ne'er the worfe, when you return into England, or come into other company, that have not heard of the quarrell. But, in the fecond cafe, you may beare the marks of the quarrell while you live, if you outlive it at all. But, if you find yourself unavoidably engaged, 'tis beft, I think, if you can command your paffion and language, to keep them pretty eavenly, at fome certain moderate pitch, not much hightning them to exafperate your adverfary, or provoke his friends, nor letting them grow over much dejected, to

make

make him infult. In a word, if you can keep reafon above paffion, that and watchfulnefle will bee your best defendants. To which purpofe you may confider, that, tho' fuch excufes as this, He provokt mee foe much, I could not forbear,' may pafs among friends, yet amongst ftrangers they are infignificant, and only argue a traveller's weakneffe.

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To thefe I may add fome general heads for inquirys or obfervations, fuch as at prefent I can think on. As,

"I. To obferve the policys, wealth, and fate-affairs of nations, fo far as a folitary tra veller may conveniently doe.

"H. Their impofitions upon all forts of people, trade, or commoditys, that are remarkable.

* 111. Their laws and cuftoms, how far they differ from ours.

IV. Their trades and arts, wherein they 'excell, or come short of us in England.

"V. Such fortifications as you meet with, their fashion, ftrength, and advantage, or defence; and other fuch military affairs as are confiderable.

VI. The power and refpect belonging to their degrees of nobility, or magiftracy.

VII. It will not be time mifpent to make a catalogue of the names and excellencys of those men that are moft wife, learned, or efteemed in any nation.

VOL. XI.

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" VIII. Obferve the mechanisme and manner of guiding fhips.

"Obferve the products of nature in several places, especially in mines, with the circumftances of mining, and of extracting metals, or minerals, out of their oare, and of refining them; and, if you meet with any tranfmutations out of their own fpecies into another (as out of hon into copper, out of any metall into quickfilver, out of one falt into another, or into an infipid body, &c.) those, above all, will be worth your noting, being the most luciferous, and many times luciferous experiments too in philofophy.

And,

X. The prices of diet and other things.

"XI. The staple commodity of places.

"Thefe generals, fuch at prefent as I could think of, if they will ferve for nothing elfe, yet they may affift you in drawing up a modell to regulate your travells by. As for particulars, these that follow are all that I now can think of: viz.

"I. Whether, at Semnitium, in Hungary, (where there are mines of gold, copper, iron, vitriol, antimony, &c.) they change iron into copper by diffolving it in a vitriolate water, which they find in cavitys of rocks in the the mines, and then melting the flimy folution in a strong fire, which in the cooling Droves copper. The like is faid to be done in

other

other places, which I cannot now remember; perhaps too it may be done in Italy; for, about twenty or thirty years agone, there was a certain vitrioll came from thence, called Roman vitrioll, but of a nobler virtue than that which is now called by that name; which vitrioll is not now to be gotten, because, perhaps, they make a greater gain by fome fuch trick as turning iron into copper with it, than by felling it.

11. Whether, in Hungary, Sclavonia, Bohemia, near the town of Flia, or at the mountains of Bohemia, near Silefia, there bee rivers whose waters are impregnated with gold; perhaps, the gold being diffolved by fome cor rofive waters, like aqua regis, and the folution carried along with the streame that runs through the mines. And, Whether the practife of laying mercury in the rivers till it be tinged with gold, and then ftraining the mercury through leather that the gold may stay behind, be a fecret yet, or openly practifed.

"III. There is newly contrived in Hol. land, a mill to grind glaffes plane withall, and I think polishing them too; perhaps it will be worth while to fee it.

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"IV. There is in Holland, one Borry, who fome years fince was imprisoned by the pope, in order to have extorted from him fecrets, as I am told, of great worth, both as to medicine and profit; but he escaped into Holland, where they ufually granted him a guard. I think he ufually goes cloathed in

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green.

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