Your Lordship, like the friends and parents of a young traveller, is
for exacting wonders at the hands of this important personage, a tutor.
But the truth is, so many, and so different things cannot be well
learned, even with the advantage of the best parts under the very best
direction.
Besides, your Lordship forgets that what we now inquire into, is,
whether the generality of our _English_ youth of quality should be
educated in this form; not, whether two or three young men, of the most
uncommon genius and application, may not possibly succeed in it. I
demand an education, which may ordinarily produce useful and able men:
your Lordship is providing only for, what comes of itself, a prodigy.
And now, my Lord, with this preparation, I think myself enabled
to reply distinctly to the several arguments you alleged for the
expediency of foreign travel. It is very clear, that the most solid
advantages are lost by it. But perhaps we shall find a recompense for
this loss, in the shewy and ornamental accomplishments, which travel
promises; and which your Lordship supposes the world will readily, and
with reason, accept instead of them.
These accomplishments are summed up in the BENEFITS of an enlarged
society and conversation; which, again, branch out into many heads; and
under different names, furnished, I think, the substance, as well as
governed the method, of your vindication.
This was the polite and popular theme, which you chose to dress out in
all the colours of your eloquence. To make way for these, and to lay
them on with more effect, your Lordship was pleased to tell us a very
melancholy story. _England_, it seems, is over-run with barbarism and
ignorance; its inhabitants are rude and uncivilized; and nothing can
be learnt among them, which is fit to appear in good company.
If this had been said of our forefathers in CÆSAR’S time, or even in
good King EDGAR’S, when the land, they say, was over-run with wolves
(by which, I suppose, the monkish mythology means _men_, as savage); I
could have found but little, it may be, to oppose to the accusation.
But at this time of the day, when arts and letters have at least made
some progress among us; when commerce has extended our acquaintance
with the rudest parts of the globe, and policy strengthened our
connexions with the most civilized; when our country is filled with
large flourishing towns, and even prides itself in a vast, opulent,
and splendid metropolis; I could not but think the charge was a little
aggravated, or that your Lordship had forgotten to speak of _England_,
as it now subsists, in the close of the seventeenth century. It seemed
to me as if the _English_ might now, at least, deserve to be considered
as _men_; and that in our courts and camps, if not in our colleges, we
might stand a chance of finding what your Lordship would not disdain to
qualify with the name of _gentlemen_.
But the other representation was more favourable to your Lordship’s
cause: and out of that representation arose the several BARBARITIES,
with which you thought fit to mortify and alarm us.
The first fire of your zeal is spent on that swarm of PREJUDICES,
with which our _English_, or at least provincial, youth are commonly
over-run.
PREJUDICES, my Lord, is an equivocal term; and may as well mean right
opinions taken upon trust, and deeply rooted in the mind, as false and
absurd opinions, so derived and grown into it.
The _former_ of these will do no hurt; on the contrary, perhaps, the
very best part of education is employed in the culture of them.
But admit, they are of the _latter_ sort: still they may be only the
excesses of right principles and notions. And in that case, I should
doubt whether the evil be of consequence enough to deserve your
indignation. Perhaps no man has enough of certain virtues, that does
not carry them something too far. The just degree, the precise mean, is
a nice point to hit. The condition of our common nature is such, that
we either overshoot the mark, or fall short of it; and your Lordship
easily apprehends which is the more convenient as well as more generous
part, in this moral archery.
Besides, reflexion and experience will come in, soon enough to moderate
these excesses. So that, for my part, though our young patriot should
happen to entertain the extravagant conceit, you diverted yourself
with, of the soil and climate of _Old England_, I should take that for
no great objection to his home-breeding, and should, possibly, not be
over-forward to disabuse him of such honest errors.
Surely, my Lord, there are certain _associations_ of ideas, which,
however oddly formed, your Lordship would be something loth to undo.
To take your own instance: What if the ideas of liberty chanced to be
closely connected with those of _Old England_; so as, by the magic
of this union, to convert her rude heaths and barren mountains into
pleasurable landskips; would you be forward, if you had it in your
power, to dissolve this charm, and, by setting those objects in their
true and proper light, disenchant the mind, at the same time, from the
idea, or warm love at least, of _English_ liberty?