THE FOLLOWING passages are examples of the kind of advice available to travellers in guidebooks and in the accounts of people who had already made the Tour.

PREPARING FOR THE GRAND TOUR

THERE IS certainly no Place in the World where a Man may Travel with greater Pleasure and Advantage than in Italy. One finds something more particular in the Face of the Country, and more astonishing in the Works of Nature, than can be met with in any other Part of Europe. It is the great School of Musick and Painting, and contains in it all the noblest Productions of Statuary and Architecture both Ancient and Modern. It abounds with Cabinets of Curiosities, and vast Collections of all Kinds of Antiquities. No other Country in the World has such a Variety of Governments, that are so different in their Constitutions, and so refined in their Politicks, There is scarce any Part of the Nation that is not Famous in History, nor so much as a Mountain or River that has not been the Scene of some extraordinary Action.

As there are few Men that have Talents or Opportunities for examining so copious a Subject, one may observe among those who have written on Italy, that different Authors have succeded best on different sorts of Curiosities. Some have been more particular in their Accounts of Pictures, Statues and Buildings; some have search'd into Libraries, Cabinets of Rarities, and Collections of Medals, as others have been wholly taken up with Inscriptions, Ruins and Antiquities.