Small wonder, therefore, that a youth, who returned from driving by post-chaise through the principal towns of Europe in the company of a meek chaplain,[392] returned from his tour about as much refined, according to Congreve, "as a Dutch skipper from a whale-fishing."[393] The whole idea of the Grand Tour was thrown into disrepute after its adoption by crude and low-bred people, who thought it necessary to inform all their acquaintance where they had been, by a very unbecoming dress and a very awkward address: "not knowing that an Englishman's beef-and-pudding face will not agree with a hat no bigger than a trencher; and that a man who never learned to make a bow performs it worse in a head of hair dressed a L'aille Pidgeon, than in a scratch wig."[394]
In many other ways, also, travel lost its dignity in the eighteenth century. It was no longer necessary to live in foreign countries to understand them. With the foundation of the chairs of modern history at Oxford and Cambridge by King George the First in 1724, one great reason for travel was lost. Information about contemporary politics on the Continent could be had through the increasing number of news-journals and gazettes. As for learning the French language, there had been no lack of competent teachers since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 sent French Protestant refugees swarming across the channel to find some sort of living in England. Therefore the spirit of acquisitiveness dwindled and died down, in the absence of any strong need to study abroad, and an idle, frivolous, darting, capricious spirit controlled the aristocratic tourist. Horace Walpole on his travels spent his time in a way that would have been censured by the Elizabethans. He rushed everywhere, played cards, danced through the streets of Rheims before the ladies' coaches, and hailed with delight every acquaintance from England. What would Sir Philip Sidney have thought of the mode of life Walpole draws in this letter:
"About two days ago, about four o'clock in the afternoon ... as we were picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray[395] in an undress, Mr Conway in a morning-grey coat and I in a trim white night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr Walpole from Mr More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on Mr Walpole. We scuttle upstairs in great confusion, but with no other damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the dropping a slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be cleaned out, and sent a very civil response to Mr More, we began to consider who Mr More might be."[396]
In the tour of Walpole and Gray one may see a change in the interest of travel; how the romantic spirit had already ousted the humanistic love of men and cities. As he drifted through Europe Gray took little interest in history or in the intricacies of human character. He would not be bothered by going to Courts with Walpole, or if he did he stood in the corner of the ballroom and looked on while Walpole danced. What he cared for was La Grande Chartreuse, with its cliffs and pines and torrents and hanging woods.[397] He is the forerunner of the Byronic traveller who delighted in the terrific aspects of nature and disdained mankind. Different indeed was the genial heart of Howell, who was at pains to hire lodgings in Paris with windows opening on the street, that he might study every passerby,[398] but who spoke of mountains in Spain in a casual way as "not so high and hideous as the Alps," or as "uncouth, huge, monstrous Excrescences of Nature, bearing nothing but craggy stones."[399]
With the decline of enthusiasm over the serious advantages of travel, there was not much demand for those essays on the duties of the student abroad which we have tried to describe. By the eighteenth century, hand-books for travellers were much the same as those with which we are to-day familiar; that is, a guide-book describing the particular objects to be inspected, and the sensations they ought to inspire, together with exceedingly careful notes as to the price of meals and transportation. This sort of manual became necessary when travel grew to be the recreation of men of moderate education who could not read the local guide-books written in the language of the country they visited. Compilations such as the Itinerarium Italiæ of Schottus, published at Antwerp in 1600, and issued in eleven editions during the seventeenth century, had been sufficient for the accomplished traveller of the Renaissance.[400] France, as the centre of travel, produced the greatest number of handy manuals,[401] and it was from these, doubtless, that Richard Lassels drew the idea of composing a similar work in the English language, which would comprise the exhortation to travel, in the manner of Turler, with a continental guide to objects of art. The Voyage of Italy by Lassels, published in Paris in 1670, marks the beginning of guide-books in English.
Still, in succeeding vade-mecums there are some occasional echoes of the old injunctions to improve one's time. Misson's A New Voyage to Italy,[402] maps out some intellectual duties. According to Misson a voyager ought to carry along with him a cane divided into several measures, or a piece of pack-thread well twined and waxed, fifty fathom long and divided into feet by knots, so as to be able to measure the height of the towers and the bigness of pillars and the dimensions of everything so far as he is able. This seems sufficiently laborious, but it makes for an easy life compared to the one prescribed by Count Leopold Berchtold in his Essay to Direct and Extend the Inquiries of Patriotic Travellers. He would have one observe the laws and customs of foreigners with a curiosity that would extend to every department of social and economic life, beginning with "Causes of the Decrease of Population and Remedies to prevent them"; proceeding to such matters as the state of the peasantry; to questions applicable to manuring, ploughing, and the housing of black cattle; or to an "Inquiry concerning Charitable Institutions such as one for recovering Drowned and Strangled Persons"; or to the "Extent of Liberty to Grown-up Young Ladies." In case the traveller is at a loss how to conduct his investigation, a list of particular questions on the topics for study is added by the author. A few random examples of this list are:
"Which are the favourite herbs of the sheep of this country?"
"Are there many instances of people having been bit by mad animals?"
"Is the state of a bachelor aggravated and rendered less desirable? By what means?"