"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:
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