The Terra Firma

Abstract

‘Learning teacheth more in one yeare’, writes Roger Ascham back from nine days in Venice, ‘than experience in twentie: And learning teacheth safelie when experience maketh mo miserable than wise. He hazardeth sore, that waxeth wise by experience.’¹ Here is the impassioned cry of the Protestant moralist warning of the dangers of travel to the new Italy, a land fallen from its former glory: ‘Italie now, is not that Italie, that it was wont to be: … Vertue once made that contrie Mistres over all the worlde. Vice now maketh that contrie slave to them, that before, were glad to serve it.’² Ascham cautions his countrymen about the dangers.