The Frenchman "will dispatch the weightiest affairs as hee walke along
in the streets, or at meales, the other upon the least occasion of
businesse will retire solemnly to a room, and if a fly chance to hum
about him, it will discompose his thoughts and puzzle him: It is a kind
of sicknesse for a Frenchman to keep a secret long, and all the drugs of
Egypt cannot get it out of a Spaniard.... The Frenchman walks fast, (as
if he had a Sergeant always at his heels,) the Spaniard slowly, as if
hee were newly come out of some quartan Ague; the French go up and down
the streets confusedly in clusters, the Spaniards if they be above
three, they go two by two, as if they were going a Procession; etc.
etc."[245]
With the same humorous eye he observes the Englishmen returned to London
from Paris, "whom their gate and strouting, their bending in the hammes,
and shoulders, and looking upon their legs, with frisking and singing do
speake them Travellers.... Some make their return in huge monstrous
Periwigs, which is the Golden Fleece they bring over with them. Such,
I say, are a shame to their Country abroad, and their kinred at home,
and to their parents, Benonies, the sons of sorrow: and as Jonas in the
Whales belly, travelled much, but saw little."[246]
These are some of the advantages an Englishman will reap from foreign
travel:
"One shall learne besides there not to interrupt one in the relation of
his tale, or to feed it with odde interlocutions: One shall learne also
not to laugh at his own jest, as too many used to do, like a Hen, which
cannot lay an egge but she must cackle.
"Moreover, one shall learne not to ride so furiously as they do
ordinarily in England, when there is no necessity at all for it; for the
Italians have a Proverb, that a galloping horse is an open sepulcher.
And the English generally are observed by all other Nations, to ride
commonly with that speed as if they rid for a midwife, or a Physitian,
or to get a pardon to save one's life as he goeth to execution, when
there is no such thing, or any other occasion at all, which makes them
call England the Hell of Horses.
"In these hot Countreyes also, one shall learne to give over the habit
of an odde custome, peculiar to the English alone, and whereby they are
distinguished from other Nations, which is, to make still towards the
chimney, though it bee in the Dog-dayes."[247]
We need not comment in detail upon Howell's book since it is so
accessible. The passage which chiefly marks the progress of travel for
study's sake is this:
"For private Gentlemen and Cadets, there be divers Academies in Paris,
Colledge-like, where for 150 pistols a Yeare, which come to about L150
sterling per annum of our money, one may be very well accomodated, with
lodging and diet for himself and man, and be taught to Ride, to Fence,
to manage Armes, to Dance, Vault, and ply the Mathematiques."[248]
