Can your Lordship seriously expect that a young boy should comprehend the effect, which government, policy, institution, and other circumstances of life, have on the pliant reason of mankind? or that he should have the skill to disentangle the various folds and intricacies, in which their real characters lie involved, through the insidious and discordant working of the passions? He should surely know what truth and reason is, before he can derive any benefit to himself from the discourse of men: and he should have carefully watched the movements of his own heart, before he presume to analyze, as your Lordship expressed it, the characters of others.
You see, then, the unseasonableness and inutility of foreign travel, as to the case in hand, even on the supposition that our traveller were admitted into what is called, the best company. But how shall this privilege be obtained? In what country can it be thought that the politeness of eminent men will condescend to a free and intimate communication with boys, of whatever promising hopes, or illustrious quality? Certain slight and formal civilities, your Lordship knows, are the utmost that can be looked for; and are indeed the whole of what our ill-prepared traveller is capable.
Your Lordship did well to remind me of such societies as those in which you and I have, at times, been engaged. The recollection is, of course, flattering and agreeable. But let us presume upon ourselves, my Lord; the Limborchs and Le Clercs are not so obvious to every body, as they were to us; or, if they were, every body would not profit so well by them. And if private scholars be thus inaccessible, how shall we think to intrude on the business and occupations of experienced magistrates and ministers? And, putting both these out of the question, who remain for the tutorage and instruction of these travelled boys, but such raw, unaccomplished companions, as they left at home, and may find every where in abundance?
Still my objections go further. What if, by uncommon sagacity and good luck, some acquaintance be made with superior persons, and some little insight at length be gained into their real characters? Of what mighty advantage will this be in life, when their business lies amongst other men; and when the same industry and attention had brought them acquainted with the characters of those, they must act and live with? Foreigners are neither an easier study than our own countrymen, nor a more useful one. The very modes and forms of external breeding catch the attention of unexperienced youth; and are so many obstacles to their real progress in this science. And, when all is done, the modifications of the human character, as existing at home, and exhibited in the lives and actions of their fellow-citizens, are, as I said, the proper objects of their curiosity.
In short, the utmost I can allow to this discipline of foreign travel, under the idea of its furnishing a knowledge of the world, is, That it may possibly wear a young man into some studied and apish resemblance of the models, he copies from, in his deportment and manners; or that the various scenes, he has passed through, may furnish matter, at his return, for much unprofitable babble in conversation: but, that he should come back fraught with any solid information concerning men and things, such as, in your Lordship’s sublime phrase, may fit him to appear with lustre in the court or senate of his own country, is what I can never promise myself from this fashionable mode of education.
I am even disposed to promise myself the less from it, for an observation, I have sometimes had the opportunity of making.
An old man has so little about him to provoke envy, that he may be allowed to make the best of his former successes. And though I pride myself in one, of a very delicate nature, the boast of it will not be ill taken even there, where your Lordship, with all your pretensions, would be heard with no patience. In short, I indulge myself in the vanity of saying that I have, in my time, been well with the fair sex, and have even been countenanced so far as to be admitted into a degree of acquaintance and familiarity with some ladies of the highest quality and distinction. And of these, I have constantly observed, that, though bred up at home, they had a manifest advantage over their travelled brothers, I was going to say, in learning and science, but certainly in true politeness, good sense, and even a knowledge of the world.
LORD SHAFTESBURY.
I understand this civility to the ladies, as a decent atonement for your late freedoms with them. In this light I should be unwilling to cavil at it: and yet I see not, how your high encomiums on the superior good sense and politeness of these home-bred ladies can consist with the passion, you before censured in them, for foreign travel, as favourable, in their opinion, to the production of such virtues.