Paris.
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,
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; 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, 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 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 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 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
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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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
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, 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.
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 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 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 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.
Cœlum 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.