CHAP. L] THE FIRST DAY. Gl 



the sea for our daily traffic, without which we could not 

 now subsist ! How does it not only furnish us with food 

 and physic for the bodies, but with such observations for 

 the mind as ingenious persons would not want 1 



How ignorant had we been of the beauty of Florence, of 

 the monuments, urns, and rarities that yet remain in, and 

 near unto old and new Eome, so many as it is said will take 

 up a year's time to view, and afford to each of them but a 

 convenient consideration ! And, therefore, it is not to be 

 wondered at, that so learned and devout a father as St. 

 Jerome, after his wish to have seen Christ in the flesh, and 

 to have heard St. Paul preach, makes his third wish, to have 

 seen Eome in her glory ; and that glory is not yet all lost, 

 for what pleasure is it to see the monuments of Livy, the 

 choicest of the historians ; of Tully, the best of orators ; 

 and to see the bay-trees that now grow out of the very tomb 

 of Virgil! These, to any that love learning, must be 

 pleasing. But what pleasure is it to a devout Christian, to 

 see there the humble house in which St. Paul was content 

 to dwell, and to view the many rich statues that are made in 

 honour of his memory ! nay, to see the very place in which 

 St. Peter 1 and he lie buried together ! These are in and 

 near Eome. And how much more doth it please the pious 



of physic. He had the courage to practise in London during the great 

 plague, when most of his contemporaries fled. He lived in Aldersgate-street, 

 London, and died 1673. See Wood's " Athen. Oxon." 



1 Some learned Protestants, and among them Scaliger and Salmasius, 

 deny, not only that St. Peter lies buried in the Vatican, as the Romish 

 writers assert, but that he ever was at Rome ; while others, equally 

 learned, including Pearson and Lardner, see no reason for disbelief. See 

 the "Historia Apostolica " of Lud. Capellus. The sense of the Protestants 

 on this point is expressed in the following epigram, alluding to the prsenomen 

 of Peter, " Simon," and to the simony practised in that city : 



An Petrus fuerat Romce sub judice lis est, 

 Simonem Romce nemo fuisse negat. 

 Many that " Peter ne'er saw Rome " declare, 

 But all must own that Simon hath been there. 



Of which may be observed what I have heard said of libels, "the 

 more true the more provoking ; " and this the author, John Owen, the 

 famous epigrammatist, found to his cost ; for his uncle, a papist, was so 

 stung by these lines, that, in revenge, he disinherited him, and doomed 

 him to extreme poverty the remainder of his life. The Romanists have 

 also taken their revenge on the book that contains them, by inserting it 



