Valle, Peter De La

, a celebrated traveller, was a Roman gentleman, and member of the academy dell' Umaristi. He commenced his travels in 1614, over the East, and his account of it in Italian, 1662, 4 vols. 4to, has always been considered as giving the best account that had then appeared of Egypt, Turkey, Persia, and India. Gibbon calls him “a gentleman and a scholar, but intolerably vain and prolix.” The French have a good translation by Carreau and le Comte, 1663, 4 vols. 4to, and Rouen, 1745, 8 vols. 12mo. There is also an English translation, London, 1665, folio. He did not return from his travels until 1626. He married at Babylon a virtuous young woman, who accompanied him in his journeys, and died at Mina in Carainania, 1622, aged twenty-three. Her husband was so deeply affected with her loss, that he caused her body to be embalmed and carried it always with him in a wooden coffin, till his arrival at Rome, where he buried it with great magnificence in his family vault in the church of Ara cceli. He spoke her funeral oration himself, which may be found in Italian and French, in the 12mo edition of his Travels, He died at Rome in 1652. ¹