although it is a considerable time since my arrival, yet, as you made so long a stay at paris while we were in germany, i could not think of resuming my observations on the manners of this gay metropolis. it has been said, that those times are the most interesting to read of, which were the most disagreeable to live in. so i find the places in which it is most agreeable to reside, are precisely those from which we have the least inclination to write. there are so many resources at paris, that it always requires a great effort to write letters, of any considerable length, from such a place. this is peculiarly my case at present, as i have the happiness of passing great part of my time with mr. a—— s——t, whom i found at this hotel on my arrival. the integrity, candour,[484] and ability, of that gentleman’s conduct, during a long residence, have procured him a great number of friends in this capital, and have established a character which calumny attempted in vain to overthrow. now that i have resolution to take up my pen, i shall endeavour to clear the debt for which you dun me so unmercifully. i own, i am surprised, that you should require my opinion on the uses of foreign travel, after perusing, as you must have done, the dialogues, lately published by an eminent divine, equally distinguished for his learning and taste. but as i know what makes you peculiarly solicitous on that subject at present, i shall give you my sentiments, such as they are, without farther hesitation.
i cannot help thinking, that a young man of fortune may spend a few years to advantage, in travelling through some of the principal countries of europe, provided the tour be well-timed, and well-conducted;[485] and, without these, what part of education can be of use?
in a former letter, i gave my reasons for preferring the plan of education at the public schools of england, to any other now in use at home or abroad. after the young person has acquired the fundamental parts of learning, which are taught at schools, he will naturally be removed to some university. one of the most elegant and most ingenious writers of the present age has, in his inquiry into the causes of the wealth of nations, pointed out many deficiencies in those seminaries. what that gentleman has said on this subject, may possibly have some effect in bringing about an improvement. but, with all their deficiencies, it must be acknowledged, that no universities have produced a greater number of men distinguished for polite literature, and eminent for science, than those of england. if a young man has, previously, acquired the habit of application,[486] and a taste for learning, he will certainly find the means of improvement there; and, without these, i know not where he will make any progress in literature. but whatever plan is adopted, whether the young man studies at the university, or at home with private teachers, while he is studying with diligence and alacrity, it would be doing him a most essential injury, to interrupt him by a premature expedition to the continent, from an idea of his acquiring the graces, elegance of manner, or any of the accomplishments which travelling is supposed to give. literature is preferable to all other accomplishments, and the men of rank who possess it, have a superiority over those who do not, let their graces be what they may, which the latter feel and envy, while they affect to despise.
according to this plan, a youth, properly educated, will seldom begin his foreign tour before the age of twenty; if[487] it is a year or two later, there will be no harm.
this is the age, it may be said, when young men of fortune endeavour to get into parliament: it is so; but if they should remain out of parliament till they are a few years older, the affairs of the nation might possibly go on as well.
it may also be said, if the tour is deferred till the age of twenty, the youth will not, after that period of life, attain the modern languages in perfection. nor will he acquire that easy manner, and fine address, which are only caught by an early acquaintance with courts, and the assemblies of the gay and elegant. this is true to a certain degree; but the answer is, that by remaining at home, and applying to the pursuits of literature, he will make more valuable attainments.
i am at a loss what to say about those same graces; it is certainly desirable to[488] possess them, but they must come, as it were, spontaneously, or they will not come at all. they sometimes appear as volunteers, but cannot be pressed into any service; and those who shew the greatest anxiety about them, are the least likely to attain them. i should be cautious, therefore, of advising a young man to study them either at home or abroad with much solicitude. students of the graces are, generally, the most abominably affected fellows in the world. i have seen one of them make a whole company squeamish.
though the pert familiarity of french children would not become an english boy, yet it merits the earliest and the utmost attention to prevent or conquer that aukward timidity which so often oppresses the latter when he comes into company. the timidity i speak of, is entirely different from modesty. i have seen the most impudent boys i ever knew, almost convulsed with constraint in the presence of strangers, or when they were required to pronounce[489] a single sentence of civility. but it was only on such occasions they were bashful. among their companions or inferiors, they were saucy, rude, and boisterous.
if boys of this description only were liable to bashfulness, it would be a pity to remove it. but although this quality is distinct from modesty, it is not incompatible with it. boys of the most modest and most amiable disposition are often overwhelmed with it; from them it ought to be removed, if it can be done, without endangering that modesty which is so great an ornament to youth, and indeed to every period of life. this, surely, may be done in england, as well as in any other country; but it is too much neglected: many consider it as a matter of no importance, or that it will wear off by time. we see it, however, often annihilate, and always impair the effect of the greatest and most useful talents. after the care of forming the heart by the principles of benevolence and[490] integrity, perhaps one of the most important parts of education is, to habituate a boy to behave with modesty, but without restraint, and to retain the full possession of all his faculties in any company.
to attain, betimes, that ease and elegance of manner, which travelling is supposed to bestow, and that the young gentleman may become perfectly master of the modern languages, some have thought of mixing the two plans; and, instead of allowing him to prosecute his studies at home, sending him abroad, immediately on his coming from school, on the supposition that, with the assistance of a tutor and foreign professors, he will proceed in the study of philosophy, and other branches of literature, during the three or four years which are employed in the usual tour. it will not be denied, that a young man who has made good use of his time at school and at the university, who has acquired such a taste for science as to consider[491] its pursuits as a pleasure, and not a task, may, even during his travels, mix the study of men with that of books, and continue to make progress in the latter, when the greater part of his time is dedicated to the former. but that such a taste will, for the first time, spring up in the breast of a boy of sixteen or seventeen, amidst the dissipation of theatres, reviews, processions, balls, and assemblies, is of all things the least probable.
others, who think lightly of the importance of what is usually called science to a young man of rank and fortune, still contend, that a knowledge of history, which they admit may be of some use even to men of fortune, can certainly be acquired during the years of travelling. but what sort of a knowledge will it be which a boy, in such a situation, will acquire? not that which lord bolingbroke calls philosophy, teaching by examples, a proper conduct in the various situations of public and private[492] life, but merely a succession of reigns, of battles, and sieges, stored up in the memory without reflection or application. i remember a young gentleman, whom a strong and retentive memory of such events often set a prating very mal-à-propos; one of his companions expressed much surprise at his knowledge, and wondered how he had laid up such a store. “why, truly,” replied he, with frankness, “it is all owing to my bungling blockhead of a valet, who takes up such an unconscionable time in dressing my hair, that i am glad to read to keep me from fretting; and as there are no newspapers, or magazines, to be had in this country, i have been driven to history, which answers nearly as well.”
but it sometimes happens, that young men who are far behind their contemporaries in every kind of literature, are wonderfully advanced in the knowledge of the town, so as to vie with the oldest professors[493] in london, and endanger their own health by the ardour of their application. the sooner such premature youths are separated from the connections they have formed in the metropolis, the better; and as it will not be easy to persuade them to live in any other part of great britain, it will be necessary to send them abroad. but, instead of being carried to courts and capitals, the best plan for them will be, to fix them in some provincial town of france or switzerland, where they may have a chance of improving, not so much by new attainments, as by unlearning or forgetting what they have already acquired.
after a young man has employed his time to advantage at a public school, and has continued his application to various branches of science till the age of twenty, you ask, what are the advantages he is likely to reap from a tour abroad?
he will see mankind more at large, and in numberless situations and points of view,[494] in which they cannot appear in great britain, or any one country. by comparing the various customs and usages, and hearing the received opinions of different countries, his mind will be enlarged. he will be enabled to correct the theoretical notions he may have formed of human nature, by the practical knowledge of men. by contemplating their various religions, laws, and government, in action, as it were, and observing the effects they produce on the minds and characters of the people, he will be able to form a juster estimate of their value than otherwise he could have done. he will see the natives of other countries, not as he sees them in england, mere idle spectators, but busily employed in their various characters, as actors on their own proper stage. he will gradually improve in the knowledge of character, not of englishmen only, but of men in general; he will cease to be deceived either by the varnish with which men are apt to heighten their own actions, or the dark colours in[495] which they, too often, paint those of others. he will learn to distinguish the real from the ostensible motive of men’s words and behaviour. finally, by being received with hospitality, conversing familiarly, and living in the reciprocal exchange of good offices with those whom he considered as enemies, or in some unfavourable point of view, the sphere of his benevolence and good-will to his brethren of mankind will gradually enlarge. his friendships extending beyond the limits, of his own country, will embrace characters congenial with his own in other nations. seas, mountains, rivers, are geographical boundaries, but never limited the good-will or esteem of one liberal mind. as for his manner, though it will probably not be so janty as if he had been bred in france from his earliest youth, yet that also will in some degree be improved.
however persuaded he may be of the advantages enjoyed by the people of england,[496] he will see the harshness and impropriety of insulting the natives of other countries with an ostentatious enumeration of those advantages; he will perceive how odious those travellers make themselves, who laugh at the religion, ridicule the customs, and insult the police of the countries through which they pass, and who never fail to insinuate to the inhabitants that they are all slaves and bigots. such bold britons we have sometimes met with, fighting their way through europe, who, by their continual broils and disputes, would lead one to imagine that the angel of the lord had pronounced on each of them the same denunciation which he did on ishmael the son of abraham, by his handmaid hagar. “and he will be a wild man, and his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him[12].” if the same unsocial disposition should creep into our politics, it might arm all the powers in europe against[497] great britain, before she gets clear of her unhappy contest with america. a young man, whose mind has been formed as it ought, before he goes abroad, when he sees many individuals preserve personal dignity in spite of arbitrary government, an independent mind amidst poverty, liberal and philosophic sentiments amidst bigotry and superstition; must naturally have the highest esteem for such characters, and allow them more merit than those even of his own country, who think and act in the same manner in less unfavourable circumstances.
besides these advantages, a young man of fortune, by spending a few years abroad, will gratify a natural and laudable curiosity, and pass a certain portion of his life in an agreeable manner. he will form an acquaintance with that boasted nation, whose superior taste and politeness are universally acknowledged; whose fashions and language are adopted by all europe; and who,[498] in science, power, and commerce, are the rivals of great britain. he will have opportunities of observing the political constitution of the german empire; that complex body, formed by a confederacy of princes, ecclesiastics, and free cities, comprehending countries of vast extent, inhabited by a hardy race of men, distinguished for solid sense and integrity, who, without having equalled their sprightlier neighbours in works of taste or imagination, have shewn what prodigious efforts of application the human mind is capable of in the severest and least amusing studies, and whose armies exhibit at present the most perfect models of military discipline. in contemplating these, he will naturally consider, whether those armies tend most to the aggrandizement of the monarch, or to defend or preserve any thing to the people who maintain them, and the soldiers who compose them, equivalent to the vast expence of money, and the still greater quantity of misery which they occasion.
[499]
viewing the remains of roman taste and magnificence, he will feel a thousand emotions of the most interesting nature, while those whose minds are not, like his, stored with classical knowledge, gaze with tasteless wonder, or phlegmatic indifference; and, exclusive of those monuments of antiquity, he will naturally desire to be acquainted with the present inhabitants of a country, which at different periods has produced men who, by one means or another, have distinguished themselves so eminently from their contemporaries of other nations. at one period, having subdued the world by the wisdom and firmness of their councils, and the disciplined vigour of their armies, rome became at once the seat of empire, learning, and the arts.
after the northern barbarians had destroyed the overgrown fabric of roman power, a new empire, of a more singular nature, gradually arose from its ruins, artfully extending its influence over the minds[500] of men, till the princes of europe were at length as much controlled by the bulls of the vatican, as their ancestors had been by the decrees of the senate.
commerce also, which rapine and slaughter had frightened from europe, returned, and joined with superstition in drawing the riches of all the neighbouring nations to italy. and, at a subsequent period, learning, bursting through the clouds of ignorance which overshadowed mankind, again shone forth in the same country, bringing in her train, poetry, painting, sculpture, and music, all of which have been cultivated with the greatest success; and the three last brought, by the inhabitants of this country, to a degree of excellence unequalled by the natives of any other country of the world. when to these considerations we add, that there is reason to believe that this country had arrived at a great degree of perfection in the arts before the beginning of the[501] roman republic, we are almost tempted to believe, that local and physical causes have a considerable influence in rendering the mind more acute in this country of italy, than any where else; and that if the infinite political disadvantages under which it labours were removed, and the whole of this peninsula united in one state, it would again resume its superiority over other nations.
lastly, by visiting other countries, a subject of great britain will acquire a greater esteem than ever for the constitution of his own. freed from vulgar prejudices, he will perceive, that the blessings and advantages which his countrymen enjoy, do not flow from their superiority in wisdom, courage, or virtue, over the other nations of the world, but, in some degree, from the peculiarity of their situation in an island; and, above all, from those just and equitable laws which secure property, that mild free government[502] which abhors tyranny, protects the meanest subject, and leaves the mind of man to its own exertions, unrestrained by those arbitrary, capricious, and impolitic shackles, which confine and weaken its noblest endeavours in almost every other country of the world. this animates industry, creates fertility, and scatters plenty over the boisterous island of great britain, with a profusion unknown in the neighbouring nations, who behold with astonishment such numbers of british subjects, of both sexes, and of all ages, roaming discontented through the lands of despotism, in search of that happiness, which, if satiety and the wanton restlessness of wealth would permit, they have a much better prospect of enjoying in their own country.
c?lum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.
strenua nos exercet inertia, navibus atque
quadrigis petimus bene vivere. quod petis, hic est.
[12] vide genesis, chap. xvi. verse 12.
