It Is No Wonder, Therefore, That Spain Was Considered A Rather Tedious
Country For Strangers, And That Howell "Met More
Passengers 'twixt Paris
and Orleans, than I found well neer in all the Journey through
Spain."[287] Curiosity and a
Desire to learn the language might carry a
man to Madrid for a time, but Englishmen could find little to commend
there. Holland, on the other hand, provoked their admiration more and
more. Travellers were never done exclaiming at its municipal
governments, its reformatories and workhouses, its industry, frugality,
and social economy. The neat buildings, elegant streets, and quiet inns,
were the subject of many encomiums.[288]
Descartes, who chose Amsterdam as the place in which to think out his
philosophy, praised it as the ideal retreat for students, contending
that it was far better for them than Italy, with its plagues, heat,
unwholesome evenings, murder and robbery.[289] Locke, when he went into
voluntary exile in 1684, enjoyed himself with the doctors and men of
letters in Amsterdam, attending by special invitation of the principal
physician of the city the dissection of a lioness, or discussing knotty
problems of theology with the wealthy Quaker merchants.[290] Courtiers
were charmed with the sea-shore at Scheveningen, where on the hard sand,
admirably contrived by nature for the divertisement of persons of
quality, the foreign ambassadors and their ladies, and the society of
the Hague, drove in their coaches and six horses.[291] However, Sir
William Temple, after some years spent as Ambassador to the Netherlands,
decided that Holland was a place where a man would choose rather to
travel than to live, because it was a country where there was more sense
than wit, more wealth than pleasure, and where one would find more
persons to esteem than to love.[292]
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