The English are assuredly a most enterprising and restless people: they
form establishments at the Antipodes, and plant colonies on the banks of
the Loire, in an enemy's country, after a war of twenty years: their
merchant-vessels cover the seas, and their opulent and unoccupied gentry
inundate the continent of Europe: their hardy mariners search out the
north-west passage, and the idle and curious among them strive, with no
less difficulty, to discover lakes, mountains, and cascades, unvisited
by former adventurers,
------qua nulla priorum
orbita.------
English reading-rooms are set up at Tours and in other great towns;
English seminaries of education are founded in France, Switzerland, and
Italy; and English horse-races are exhibited at Naples. Fox-hunters and
fox-hounds penetrate to covers where even the foxes never saw them
before; where, coming from their holes, they gaze quietly upon them;
where there is no sport, because no pursuit; no pursuit, because no
flight; no flight, because no fear; no fear, because no experience of
former enmity.
The French calculated, with some degree of satisfaction, that, during
the occupation of their frontier by the army of observation, the English
spent as much money at Paris as was contributed by themselves to the
support of that army. At Florence, towards the end of the year 1822, I
was informed by good authority, that there were twelve thousand
foreigners in the city, of whom seven thousand were English.
By a migration, very much resembling the flight of birds of passage,
they usually leave their country in the spring, and after a few weeks at
Paris, set off to pass the summer in Switzerland, arrive in Italy in the
autumn, cross the Apennines before the winter; the beginning of which
season they spend at Florence: they go to Rome for the Carnival, to
Naples for a month or five weeks of Lent, return to Rome for the holy
week, and then, much edified and instructed, they find their way home,
during the ensuing summer, through France or Germany. I asked Lady A. at
Rome, when she went to Naples: "I don't know;--when the others go:" so
much is this route recognised as a matter of course.
The route is in truth admirably well traced, and eighteen months might
thus be passed to great advantage by a well-prepared and impartial
traveller. Rarely however are these English sufficiently acquainted with
the languages of the countries through which they pass, to be able to
sustain a conversation: they carry with them their insular prejudices,
their pride of wealth, their unpliant manners, their attachment to their
own customs, amusements, and cookery: though treated with indulgence and
even civil attentions by the governments of the continent, they are
suffered, rather than received by the inhabitants. For their choice of
the objects of curiosity they visit, and the opinion to be formed upon
them, they are at the mercy of guides and ciceroni: for society, they
are guided by instinct, and reduced by necessity, to herd together. An
Italian lady at Florence opened her salon for the reception of a mixed
company of Florentines and English: the English occupied, first one
corner, and then a whole side, of the salon, their numbers increasing,
but the chasm between them and the natives still remaining. The lady,
fatigued with doing the honours of her house to two separate companies
on the same evenings, and disgusted with these appearances of distrust
and resiliency, invented some decent pretext for receiving no more.
Observing this propensity in the English to associate with each other,
foreigners seem persuaded that Yorick alone did not quit England to seek
Englishmen. I was asked if I had been at Tours, because there were so
many of my countrymen there. "My countrymen," said I, "choose well;
Touraine is said to be the garden of France." My interlocutor recurred
to the idea with which he had first proposed the question. "Il y a la
tant de vos compatriotes."--"Il y en a encore plus en Angleterre:"[3]
and Sterne's argument prevailed.
Many persons of small incomes; many who wish to retrench their expenses,
but are ashamed of doing so at home; some for the purpose of having wine
and fruit at a cheaper rate; and some for the sake of a better
climate,--pass several years abroad, fixed at the place of their
first choice, or travelling but little, and at great intervals of time.
The economical residents abroad seldom proceed further from home than to
the towns near the southern shore of the channel, and to those on the
banks of the Loire. Some parents take their children abroad to enable
them to acquire the use of those living languages, which, though very
generally taught, are very rarely learned in England. Excluded from the
greater part of the continent of Europe during twenty years of
revolution and of war, English travellers had been obliged to waste
their activity in voyages to the western isles of Scotland, or in
picturesque tours to the Giant's Causeway, or the Lake of Killarney:
some cooled their ardour amid the snows of Scandinavia, and others
roused their classical enthusiasm by the view of Salamis and Thermopylae:
some measured the Pyramids of Egypt, others performed pilgrimages to the
Holy Land. The peace of Amiens opened to them, though but for a few
short months, the road to Paris, and the gallery of the Louvre, enriched
with the spoils of nations.
It is not forgotten how, on the rupture of that peace, they were
arrested, throughout the whole extent of the French republic and its
dependencies, and detained as prisoners of war, in reprisal of the
seizure of French ships and citizens throughout the maritime empire of
England: succeeding English travellers, twelve years later, remembered
it well: the crowds, again attracted to Paris on the restoration of the
king, fled in all directions on the landing of Napoleon from Elba.
"Pourquoi me fuient-ils?" said he: "je ne me repete pas."[4]
Perhaps the outlawry fulminated against him by the congress of Vienna
would have been as good a reason for doing again what he had done
before, as the sweeping the seas without declaration of war was alleged
to be on the former occasion: perhaps he regretted the failure of a
second opportunity of retorting on England, in this way, the hatred and
insult with which he had ever been treated by its government. At any
rate, the distrust of the English travellers was founded on experience,
and the reproach conveyed in this manifestation of it was answered by an
ingenious, spirited, and in some sort conciliatory pleasantry.
After the battle of Waterloo, the travellers, some of whom had retired
no further than to the Low Countries, followed in the train of the
victorious, and invading armies: all were impatient to return to Paris;
in truth their impatience was not without good cause. All the monuments
of the fine arts were now to be dispersed: the _fruits of victory_
deposited at Paris were soon to be restored to their former owners.
It was evidently the interest of England, that this superb collection
should remain within three days journey of London; but the principle
"suum cuique" forbad it. Yet the republic of Genoa had the same right to
its ancient constitution as to the far-famed emerald dish, which I saw
in the Hotel de Ville at Genoa, with a piece broken out of it. The union
of the littoral to the dominion of Sardinia is an advantage to both
parties: but then what becomes of the principle which dictated the
restitution of the emerald dish?
Notwithstanding the necessity thus imposed on our travellers of
wandering all over Europe in search of objects once assembled near their
own doors,--the nations of the continent are not too much inclined to
believe in the _bonhommie_ of English politicians; nor indeed can it be
certainly known how far their good will was an ingredient in this, so
called, act of justice.
Since the second restoration of the King of France, peace, and the
visits of the English to the countries to which ingress is no longer
prohibited, have continued without interruption: residence abroad has
assumed an appearance of stability and design. An outcry has been raised
in England against these emigrations, and it has been proposed to tax
absentees; a measure which, in its application to those who take a
journey for a few months, would be at once vexatious and ridiculous, and
in its operation on those who retire abroad on account of contracted
income, would be severe and unproductive; and which could, in neither
case, be effected without a partial income-tax. The number of travellers
and residents abroad, though great, has been much exaggerated: wherever
exact inquiry has been made, it has turned out to be less than was
reported. I could not hear of more than six or eight English families
resident by the year in each of the three great towns of Italy,
Florence, Rome, and Naples.
The French, persuaded that society can no where else be so well enjoyed
as in France, feel little inclination to travel. The Italians, satisfied
that all that is best worth beholding both in art and nature is to be
found on their side of the Alps, seldom take the trouble of passing that
barrier. I speak of the same class of persons, in both nations, as that
in which the English traveller is to be found,--the rich and idle; for
the poorer French and Italians are more adventurous, and more frequently
leave their own country to gain their living abroad, than those of the
lower condition of life in our sea-girt isle. I have therefore
frequently been called upon to explain the phenomenon of the British
spirit of excursion. My friends at Avignon could hardly believe that
curiosity, the desire of instruction, the purpose of employing usefully
a portion of time which would otherwise be employed in the ordinary
routine of life, were motives sufficient for incurring the expense,
trouble, and risk of long journeys: the expense, they allowed, might be
a consideration of no importance to a people so rich as the English;
besides, they travelled cheaper in France than in England; yet it would
cost still less to stay at home: the defiance of fatigue and danger were
very gravely accounted for by the supposition of something peculiar to
the English character, a certain restlessness and locomotive propensity,
which dislodged them from the centre of repose, and impelled them to
wander in wide and extravagant orbits. The astonishment of the
Avignonais was excessive, when a lady, who intended to pass some years
in the south of France, coming to visit my family, and changing her
purpose, returned to Paris within a fortnight. "Les Anglois font tout
ce qu'ils veulent: un voyage de trois cents lieues pour une visite de
quinze jours."[5] Like the rustic in the fable, they waited to see the
end of this current of travellers; and I could hardly obtain credit when
I assured them that, though some extraordinary degree of expansion was
to be expected after twenty years compression, yet when the present
generation should cease, the succeeding one would still supply the
stream.
May this stream still hold on in an equal and uninterrupted course; may
no wars arrest it; no jealousies divert it; no disgusts dry up its
source! The division of mankind into nations is the great calamity of
the human race. War, with all its horrors, and all its crimes, (for
crimes there must be; since no war can be just on both sides, and may on
both sides be unjust,) war, with all its inflictions, is the first great
evil arising from this separation of those who ought, as creatures and
sons of the same Creator and Father, to be "a band of brothers." From
war results that other great evil, seen in the administration of the
internal concerns of each country; the government being of necessity
entrusted, for the defence of the people, with the power of the sword,
the people are governed by the sword of power. Hostile prejudices, the
strife of interests ill understood, false judgments, and the jargon of
languages mutually unintelligible, fears, suspicions, and precautions
perpetuate the evil of disunion when the work of havoc and desolation
is suspended. Short and feverish are the periods of suspension: they are
put out to inestimable profit when the means are employed of making the
several peoples of the earth better known to each other, of softening
asperities, removing misunderstandings, and conciliating mutual
good-will.
Such ought to be, over and above the peculiar advantage and pleasure of
each individual traveller, the object of foreign travel. To the
furtherance of this object it is hoped that this account of a long
residence in France and Italy may in some slight degree contribute: it
is written without prepossession, in good-will towards the people I have
visited, in the conviction that human nature, though not virtuous, is in
all countries capable of, and inclined to virtue. For variety of usages,
which makes men appear more alien from each other than they really
are,--either it regards things indifferent, or there exists a good
reason for it, which observation enables us to discover. To me in truth
this difference in European customs appears so slight, that, were it not
for the language, I could easily forget that I was abroad. "Omne solum
forti patria:" but it requires still more fortitude to have no _patria_
at all, as is the case of an English catholic: for political rights are
included in the idea of _patria_.
Having lived between three and four months in Paris, and between three
and four years in the south of France with my family, I have made
observations, which I hope may be useful to those who have the same plan
of foreign residence or travel, and not less interesting, both to them,
and to those who are content with their English home, than the remarks
of a more hasty tourist. The care of a household and of the education of
children brings the head of a family to the knowledge of many
circumstances and combinations which escape the notice of the single
traveller; and intercourse with the society of a place during a sojourn
gives some insight into the character, some perception of the manners
and opinions of a people.
I have also lived three years and a half in Italy, of which country I
seem to myself to have much to say; but for reasons that may be
conjectured by the reader of this book, I defer my Italian narrative
till the present work shall have undergone the judgment of the public.
Meantime, this is a separate composition, and independent of any thing I
may hereafter write on Italy.
I have lived so long in the world, that, although, from motives of
charity, I wish to have the good report of all, few remain for whose
commendation I am anxious, even as an author. I think it right however,
to request the reader's indulgence for a style of writing by no means
current or easy,--a fault owing to the habitual, daily use of two, or
even three languages: often does the foreign phrase present itself, and
then the English one is to be sought for. I have besides, for these last
eight years, had but a very sparing intercourse with English literature.
For the sake of obviating misconstruction of my occasional remarks on
political subjects, I think it right, in this introductory chapter, to
make a few general observations on the French revolution. I detest, or
obtest, against all revolutions, for two reasons: change of forms and
names, and, generally speaking, of persons even, does not always produce
a change of principles or of conduct; tyrannical democracies and
benevolent despotisms are no new things in the history of the world:
secondly, revolutions cannot change the condition of the great bulk of
mankind, of persons without property, of the poor: poor they must be;
for property is necessary to the existence of society; work they must,
because they are poor. A man of this class at Paris, whom I wanted to
engage to talk on the late revolution, cut short the matter by saying,
"pour nous autres, on ne demande a nous qu'a travailler."[6] That some
of them may benefit by a political change, proves nothing against the
uselessness of such a change to them, considered as, what they are in
effect, the mass of mankind, and in reference to the continued duration
of the social state.
On the 23d of June, 1789, Louis XVI offered to the states-general a
constitution very much resembling the charter since given by Louis
XVIII. What has the French nation gained by the refusal of the Etats
Generaux, to accede to the project of this _seance royale_? Their church
is impoverished; they are endeavouring to form an aristocracy, of which
destruction has hardly left them the elements; and the number of
electors,--of persons represented,--is now much smaller than it would
have been in the Etats Generaux. Since that day, little permanent
advantage has been obtained, except the abolition of feudal rights; but
of these, exemption from taxation had been abandoned; all that was unjust
or grievous besides, would soon have followed. A deficit of fifty millions
of francs caused the revolution; and in its consequence it has trebled the
taxes: it rejected titles and ribands as unworthy of the dignity of man,
and it has produced a second set of nobles, and a new order of knighthood.
True liberal principles cannot be disgraced; like religion, they may be
the pretext, but are not the cause of excesses and of crimes; but the
conduct of the revolution has retarded their spread and influence, by
making every wise and prudent man afraid to trust to the professors of
them. After the perpetration of horrors, on which the human mind cannot
bear to look fixedly, a military despotism is quietly submitted to, as
if nothing but, "res novae," new wealth, new power, had been sought for.
------"Ubi nunc facundus Ulysses?"
The leaders of the revolution and of the republic did not recognise the
true limit of civil authority: it has nothing to do but to defend the
state against foreign enemies, and the citizens against each other:
whatever government attempts to do more, only supplies means of vexation
to subordinate agents. They tyrannised over the religious and political
conscience of the people by the civil constitution of the clergy, who,
when their property was taken away, ought to have been let alone; by
persecutions which belied the tolerance of philosophy; by oaths of
hatred of royalty, which kept up the memory of the cowardly murder of
the king,--that aping of the English under circumstances totally
different. War, after the promulgation of perpetual peace, seemed
interminable; and the offer to assist all nations in the recovery of
liberty, was seen to be a scheme for domineering in all nations by means
of civil dissension.
These things prepared the way for Napoleon Bonaparte, whose elevation
was, at first, by no means unpopular in Europe. He must be admired by
the present age, and by posterity, as a great man: he offered himself as
pacificator, and in a few years subjected a hundred millions of
Europeans: such a force as this,--the arts, the knowledge, and by
consequence, the power of those whom he commanded taken into the
account,--no man ever yet had wielded. "He gave not God the glory:" in
this he was not alone; such was, such is, the spirit of the age: his
fall was caused by the coming on of the snow and frost in Russia a week
or fortnight sooner than usual. History records nothing equal to his
elevation and his fall. That fall must be dated at the retreat from
Moscow; the rest was but the struggle of the dying lion. The French
revolution seems like a bloody tragedy, after the representation of
which, the actors put on their every-day clothes, and resume their
ordinary occupations: it has disappointed the hopes of the
philanthropist, and delayed the effect of the moral revolution, prepared
long before, and working in the minds of enlightened men. This sort of
revolution is the only one that can be permanent or beneficial to
mankind. Christianity itself is, in its influence on civil society, a
revolution of this sort, and, in respect to this life only, has done
incalculable good.
The great results of the French revolution are to be looked for beyond
the Atlantic. Owing to the distracted state of Europe, a continent, more
abounding than the old world in the means of prosperity and power, is
become independent: the slaves of Hayti have broken their chains, and
may carry civilization and freedom to the country of their origin. Yet
another century, and Europe itself may sink into comparative
insignificance. But let the wise and virtuous unite in opinion; and
Europe, though no longer the proprietor, may still be the teacher of the
new world, and in the old may aid suffering humanity.