not  including  wine.  Poland,  on  the  contrary,  be-
ing the  granary  of  Europe  and  exporting  much
else  besides  grain,  rich  in  serf  labour,  and  with  its
retail  trade  in  the  hands  of  denationalised  aliens
who  were  well  under  control,  could  afford  to  im-


•v»


The  Purse  341

port  plenty  of  luxuries  and  enjoyed  abundance  of
necessaries :  a  goose  or  a  pig  for  the  equivalent  of
IS.  6d.,  a  loin  of  mutton  for  is. — such  were  prices
in  Poland.
A  good  test  of  relative  cheapness  is  the  value  of
the  coin  most  generally  useful;  in  Poland  these
were  the  brass  *  banns/  worth  about  a  penny  far-
thing in  to-day's  values.  Of  Italy  a  similar  state-
ment may  be  made;  of  England  just  the  contrary.
And  this  presence,  or  absence,  of  plenty  of  small
coins  affects  the  tourist  in  two  ways;  partly  in  re-
lation to  his  foody  because  the  more  common  small
change  is,  the  more  commonly  customary  is  it  to
sell  food  in  quantities  suited  to  a  single  meal  for
one;  secondly,  the  smialler  the  change,  the  smaller
the  tips.  Before  leaving  the  subject  of  food,  an
example  may  be  quoted  of  the  violence  of  the
fluctuations  in  prices  at  that  date  when  the  means
of  carriage  and  of  making  wants  known  in  time
were  so  crude.  Sir  Henry  Wotton  writes,  of  his
own  knowledge,  that  the  price  of  victuals  at  Ven-
ice was  three  times  as  high  in  1608  as  it  had  been
in  1604.
