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Of all the popular delusions that we labour under in England, I scarcely
know of one more widely circulated, and less founded in fact, than
the advantages of foreign travel. Far be it from me to undervalue the
benefits men of education receive by intercourse with strangers, and
the opportunities of correcting by personal observation the impressions
already received by study. No one sets a higher price on this than I
do; no one estimates more fully the advantages of tempering one's
nationality by the candid comparison of our own institutions with those
of other countries; no one values more highly the unbiassed frame of
mind produced by extending the field of our observation, and, instead
of limiting our experience by the details of a book, reading from the
wide-spread page of human nature itself. So conscious, indeed, am I
of the importance of this, that I look upon his education as but very
partial indeed who has not travelled. It is not, therefore, against the
benefits of seeing the world I would inveigh--it is rather against the
general application of the practice to the whole class of our countrymen
and countrywomen who swarm on the continent. Unsuited by their
tastes--unprepared by previous information-deeming a passport and a
letter of credit all-sufficient for their purpose--they set out upon
their travels. From their ignorance of a foreign language, their journey
is one of difficulty and embarrassment at every step. They understand
little of what they see, nothing of what they hear. The discomforts of
foreign life have no palliation, by their being enabled to reason
on, and draw inferences from them. All the sources of information
are hermetically sealed against them, and their tour has nothing to
compensate for its fatigue, and expense, save the absurd detail of
adventure to which their ignorance has exposed them.
It is not my intention to rail in this place against the injury done to
the moral feeling of our nation, by intimate association with the habits
of the Continent. Reserving this for a more fitting time, I shall merely
remark at present, that, so far as the habits of virtue are concerned,
more mischief is done among the middle class of our countrymen, than
those of a more exalted sphere.
Scarcely does the month of May commence, when the whole tide of British
population sets in upon the coast of France and Flanders. To watch the
crowded steamers as they arrive in Antwerp, or Boulogne, you would
say that some great and devastating plague had broken out in London, and
driven the affrighted inhabitants from their homes. Not so, however:
they have come abroad for pleasure. With a credit on Coutts, and the
inestimable John Murray for a guide, they have devoted six weeks to
France, Belgium, and the Rhine, in which ample time they are not only
to learn two languages, but visit three nations, exploring into cookery,
customs, scenery, literature, and the arts, with the same certainty
of success that they would pay a visit to Astley's. Scarcely are they
launched upon their travels when they unite into parties for personal
protection and assistance. The “_morgue Britannique_” so much spoken
of by foreigners, they appear to have left behind them; and sudden
friendships, and intimacies, spring up between persons whose only
feeling in common is that of their own absurd position. Away they
go sight-seeking in clusters. They visit cathedrals, monuments, and
galleries; they record in their journals the vulgar tirades of a hired
_commissionaire_; they eat food they detest, and they lie down to sleep
discontented and unhappy. The courteous civility of foreigners, the
theme of so much eulogy in England, they now find out to be little more
than selfishness, libertinism, and impertinence. They see the country
from the window of a diligence, and society from a place at the _table
d'hôte_, and truly both one and the other are but the vulgar high
roads of life. Their ignorance of the language alone protects them from
feeling insulted at the impertinences directed at themselves and their
country; and the untutored simplicity of their nature saves them the
mortification of knowing that the ostentatious politeness of some
moustached acquaintance is an exhibition got up by him for the
entertainment of his friends.
Poor John Bull, you have made great sacrifices for this tour. You
have cut the city, and the counting-house, that your wife may become
enamoured of dress, and your daughter of a dancing-master--that your son
may learn to play roulette and smoke cigars, and that you yourself may
ramble some thousand miles over paved roads, without an object to amuse,
without an incident to attract you. While this is a gloomy picture
enough, there is another side to the medal still worse. John Bull goes
home generally sick of what he has seen, and much more ignorant of the
Continent than when he set out. His tour, however, has laid in its
stock of foreign affectation, that renders his home uncomfortable; his
daughters pine after the flattering familiarities of their whiskered
acquaintances at Ems, or Wiesbaden; and his sons lose all zest for the
slow pursuit of competence, by reflecting on the more decisive changes
of fortune, that await on _rouge et noir_. Yet even this is not the
worst. What I deplore most of all, is the false and erroneous notions
continental nations procure of our country, and its habits, from such
specimens as these. The Englishman who, seen at home, at the head of
his counting-house, or in the management of his farm, presents a fine
example of those national traits we are so justly proud of--honest,
frank, straightforward in all his dealings, kind and charitable in his
affections; yet see him abroad, the sphere of his occupations exists
no longer--there is no exercise for the manly habits of his nature:
his honesty but exposes him to be duped; his frankness degenerates into
credulity; the unsuspecting openness of his character makes him the butt
of every artful knave he meets with; and he is laughed at from Rotterdam
to Rome for qualities which, exercised in their fitting sphere, have
made England the greatest country of the universe. Hence we have the
tone of disparagement now so universally maintained about England, and
Englishmen, from one end of the Continent to the other. It is not that
our country does not send forth a number of men well qualified to induce
different impressions of their nation; but unfortunately, such persons
move only in that rank of foreign society where these prejudices do not
exist; and it is among a different class, and unhappily a more numerous
one also, that these undervaluing opinions find currency and belief.
There is nothing more offensive than the continual appeal made by
Frenchmen, Germans, and others, to English habits, as seen among this
class of our countrymen. It is in vain that you explain to them that
these people are neither among the more educated nor the better ranks of
our country. They cannot comprehend your distinction. The habits of
the Continent have produced a kind of table-land of good-breeding, upon
which all men are equals. Thus, if you rarely meet a foreigner ignorant
of the every-day _convenances_ of the world, you still more rarely meet
with one unexceptionably well-bred. The _table d'hôte_, like the mess in
our army, has the effect of introducing a certain amount of decorum that
is felt through every relation of life; and, although the count abroad
is immeasurably beneath the gentleman at home, here, I must confess,
that the foreign cobbler is a more civilized person than his type in
England. This is easily understood: foreign breeding is not the outward
exhibition of an inward principle--it is not the manifestation of a
sense of mingled kindness, good taste, and self-respect--it is merely
the rigid observance of a certain code of behaviour that has no
reference whatever to any thing felt within; it is the mere popery of
politeness, with its saint-worship, its penances, and its privations. An
Englishman makes way for you to accommodate your passage; a foreigner--a
Frenchman I should say--does so for an opportunity to flourish his hat
or to exhibit an attitude. The same spirit pervades every act of both;
duty in one case, display in the other, are the ruling principles of
life; and, where persons are so diametrically different, there is little
likelihood of much mutual understanding or mutual esteem. To come back,
however, the great evil of this universal passion for travelling lies in
the opportunity afforded to foreigners, of sneering at our country, and
ridiculing our habits. It is in vain that our institutions are models
of imitation for the world--in vain that our national character stands
pre-eminent for good-faith and fidelity--in vain the boast that the sun
never sets upon a territory that girths the very globe itself, so long
as we send annually our tens of thousands out upon the Continent, with
no other failing than mere unfitness for foreign travel, to bring down
upon us the sneer, and the ridicule, of every ignorant and unlettered
Frenchman, or Belgian, they meet with.