riests have over both the souls and bodies of the people, gave me a
specimen of that meanness of spirit, which is nowhere else to be seen
but in Italy, especially in the city of Rome.

At Venice I perceived it quite different, the civil authority having
a visible superiority over the ecclesiastic, and the Church being more
subject there to the State than in any other part of Italy.

For these reasons I took no pleasure in filling my memoirs of Italy
with remarks of places or things. All the antiquities and valuable
remains of the Roman nation are done better than I can pretend to by
such people who made it more their business; as for me, I went to see,
and not to write, and as little thought then of these Memoirs as I ill
furnished myself to write them.

I left Italy in April, and taking the tour of Bavaria, though very
much out of the way, I passed through Munich, Passau, Lintz, and at
last to Vienna.

I came to Vienna the 10th of April 1631, intending to have gone from
thence down the Danube into Hungary, and by means of a pass, which I
had obtained from the English ambassador at Constantinople, I designed
to have seen all the great towns on the Danube, which were then in the
hands of the Turks, and which I had read much of in the history of
the war between the Turks and the Germans; but I was diverted from my
design by the following occasion.

There had been a long bloody war in the empire of Germany for twelve
years, between the emperor, the Duke of Bavaria, the King of
Spain, and the Popish princes and electors on the one side, and the
Protestant princes on the other; and both sides having been exhausted
by the war, and even the Catholics themselves beginning to dislike the
growing power of the house of Austria, 'twas thought all parties were
willing to make peace. Nay, things were brought to that pass that some
of the Popish princes and electors began to talk of making alliances
with the King of Sweden.

Here it is necessary to observe, that the two Dukes of Mecklenburg
having been dispossessed of most of their dominions by the tyranny
of the Emperor Ferdinand, and being in danger of losing the rest,
earnestly solicited the King of Sweden to come to their assistance;
and that prince, as he was related to the house of Mecklenburg, and
especially as he was willing to lay hold of any opportunity to break
with the emperor, against whom he had laid up an implacable prejudice,
was very ready and forward to come t