visit to Holland.

[Footnote 1: The Letter, which is in thirty-five pages of small
folio, is entitled "_Petri ab Heimbach, G.F., ad Serenissimum
Potentissimumque Principem Olivarium, D. G. Magnae Brittaniae
Protectorem, verae Fidei Defensorem, Pium, Felicem, Invictum,
Adlocutio Gralulatoria: Londini, Ex Typographia Jacobi
Cottrellii_, 1656." The praise of Cromwell is boundless; and his
conduct in the Piedmontese business, and his care of learning and the
Universities, are especially noticed.]

"To the very accomplished youth, PETER HEIMBACH.

"Most amply, my Heimbach, have you fulfilled your promises and all
the other expectations one would have of your goodness, with the
exception, that I have still to long for your return. You promised
that it would be within two months at farthest; and now, unless my
desire to have you back makes me misreckon the time, you have been
absent nearly three. In the matter of the Atlas you have abundantly
performed all I requested of you; which was not that you should
procure me one, but only that you would find out the lowest price
of the book. You write that they ask 130 florins; it must be the
Mauritanian mountain _Atlas_, I think, and not a book, that
you tell me is to be bought at so huge a price. Such is now the
luxury of Typographers in printing books that the furnishing of a
library seems to have become as costly as the furnishing of a
villa. Since to me at least, on account of my blindness, painted
maps can hardly be of use, vainly surveying as I do with blind eyes
the actual globe of the earth, I am afraid that the bigger the
price at which I should buy that book the greater would seem to be
my grief over my deprivation. Be good enough, pray, to take so much
farther trouble for me as to be able to inform me, when you return,
how many volumes there are in the complete work, and which of the
two issues, that of Blaeu or that of Jansen, is the larger and more
correct. This I hope to hear from yourself personally, on your
speedy return, rather than by another letter. Meanwhile farewell,
and come back to us as soon as you can.

"Westminster: Nov. 8, 1656."

One guesses from this letter that Heimbach was then in Amsterdam. It
was there, at all events, that the two Atlases about which Milton
enquired had been published or were in course of publication. That of
John Jansen, called _Novus Atlas_, when completed in 1658,
consisted