"By
This Means The King Of Spain Spends Not Much," Says The Second
Character.
"So little," is the reply, "that I dare wager the French King
spends more in Pages and Laquays, than
He of Spain among all his Court
Attendants." Buckingham's train jeered at the abstemious fare they
received.[284] It was in such irritating contrast to the lofty airs of
those who provided it. "We are still extream poor," writes the English
Ambassador about the Court of Madrid, "yet as proud as Divells, yea even
as rich Divells."[285] Not only at Court, but everywhere, Spaniards were
indifferent to strangers, and not at all interested in pleasing them.
Lord Clarendon remarks that in Madrid travellers "will find less delight
to reside than in any other Place to which we have before commended
them: for that Nation having less Reverence for meer Travellers, who go
Abroad, without Business, are not at all solicitous to provide for their
Accomodation: and when they complain of the want of many Conveniences,
as they have reason to do, they wonder men will come from Home, who will
be troubled for those Incommodities."[286]
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]
Holland was of peculiar delight to the traveller of the seventeenth
century because it contained so many curiosities and rareties.
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