ENGLISH TRAVELLERS ON THE CONTINENT.
C[oe]lum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.--Horace.
It was late ere we returned to Dieppe, and we were sauntering quietly up stairs towards our own apartments, when a waiter, carrying in a portion of the evening meal to some guests in the public room, showed just sufficient of the well-lighted salon, to tempt us in. On entering we learned that the table d'hôte supper was over, but we found seated at the hospitable board of Monsieur Petit, who never suffered any one to go away empty who was inclined to eat, an English traveller, who, like ourselves, had arrived too late. A man who wishes to make any thing of travelling ought to put all his prejudices in the lumber-room before he sets out, and if he finds them musty when he comes back, so much the better. On the road they are the most inconvenient part of his baggage, never useful, and always in the way. There are few people who adhere to their prejudices more strongly than the English. We are insular in more than geographical situation, and amongst the multitude of our countrymen, with the multitude of their feelings, character, and pursuits, one out of a thousand is not to be met with on the continent, who is not just as prejudiced as when he set out--perhaps more so, for finding a strong confirmation of many of his pre-conceived ideas, he takes it as a confirmation of all, and intrenches himself the more firmly in his original opinions.
It may seem like heresy to say it, but, after having visited many countries, I am still inclined to think that France in its various parts, notwithstanding its proximity to our own country, retains more points of interest, more of the couleur locale, than any other land. But an Englishman, who travels to see France and French people, ought always to dine at the table d'hôte, wherever he finds one. The higher classes of all nations are too nearly alike to offer any very striking points of difference to a casual observer, for the general principle of all is to conceal what they feel and what they think, at least in public; but the mixture of a table d'hôte affords almost always something worth studying. It is in such circumstances that we find the most legible pages in the book of human nature. The classes of Englishmen travelling in France are somewhat altered since Sterne's time. The economical traveller is not so simple as he was then: there are also travellers who go for luxury; there are travellers for novelty; there are travellers for information; and there are travellers who journey forth into the world from the mere necessity of locomotion. These last are very numerous amongst the English. One of this class, finding the disease coming on violently, builds himself a low carriage, with very substantial wheels, and plenty of room for his feet. He furnishes it with all the peculiar luxuries of London, strews the left-hand seat with novels, and, placing himself in the interior, with his servant behind, draws up the windows, and fancies he is travelling through Europe. The profound meditations which he enjoys in the inside of his painted box are seldom if ever interrupted, except when the carriage stops, and he asks, "John, where am I?" The servant holds open the door, touches his hat, and replies, "At Rome, sir!" and the traveller, yawning, walks into the inn.
There are several varieties of this class merging into others. One morning a party of them came into the aisle, when I was in the cathedral at Rouen (a very beautiful specimen of Gothic building, let criticism say what it will). The only attention they gave it was one vacant stare, which wandered heedlessly over the rich ornaments and the most magnificent combination of arches that architecture can produce--swore it was fine, very fine, and walked out. I asked the valet-de-place who accompanied us, how long English travellers staid in general, when they visited the cathedral. He said, "About five minutes; but if they staid longer at all, they generally made it nearly as long as we had been."
I am not particularly given to cathedral hunting, nor am I fond of what Forsyth calls "picking the bare bone of antiquity," but when I meet with any thing either beautiful in itself, or which awakens in my mind a pleasing train of ideas, I am apt to give it more than five minutes.
At ---- I met with another traveller, still more decidedly locomotive. He was a very gentlemanly young man, and I think might have been something better, but habit had given his mind a sad twist. I asked him what he thought of the Pyrenees, from whence he had just arrived. He replied that "the roads were very fine;" he had gone nine miles an hour up and down hill. I inquired if he had been at Bagnères de Luchon. "Oh, yes," answered he, "I rode there from Bagnères de Bigorre in six hours." Such seemed to have been the amount of his observations on one of the most beautiful countries of Europe. He was travelling against time.
Many who travel for health, without the command of a very large fortune, lose, I am convinced, as much by the want of those comforts they are accustomed to at home, as they gain by change of air. However, I am equally certain that the mind has far greater power over the body than we generally imagine; and that the mere rapid change of scene and incident acts as powerfully as any medicine in the Pharmacop[oe]ia.
Those who come abroad for economy may certainly now find it either in France or Germany. In almost all parts of Italy they will find themselves deceived. There is one thing, however, to be observed, which is, that English people on the continent do not save by the cheapness of the country only, but they economize by living as foreigners do.
There is another class of travellers who come abroad to procure greater luxuries than they can in England on the same income. I should be sorry to censure a large portion of my countrymen, but I think that those are scarcely excusable, who have neither curiosity nor desire of information, nor limited means, nor ill-health to plead, but who, with sufficient to maintain their rank in society at home, habitually spend their fortune in a foreign country. Their virtue at all events is not patriotism.