The Earl Of Chesterfield's Letters To His Son Define The Purpose Of A Foreign Education With A Freedom Which Is Lacking In The Book Of A Governor Who Writes For The Public Eye.

Though the contents of the letters are familiar to everyone, their connection with travel for "cultum animi" has hitherto, I think, been overlooked.

It will be remembered that the earl sent his son abroad at the age of fourteen to study for five years on the Continent, and to acquire a better preparation for life than Oxford or Cambridge could offer. Of these universities Chesterfield had a low opinion. He could not sufficiently scorn an education which did not prevent a man from being flurried at his Presentation to the King. He remembered that he himself, when he was first introduced into good company, with all the awkwardness and rust of Cambridge about him, was frightened out of his wits. At Cambridge he "had acquired among the pedants of an illiberal seminary a turn for satire and contempt, and a strong tendency to argumentation and contradiction," which was a hindrance to his progress in the polite world. Only after a continental education did he see the follies of Englishmen who knew nothing of modern Europe, who were always talking of the Ancients as something more than men, and of the Moderns as something less. "They are never without a classic or two in their pockets; they stick to the old good sense; they read none of modern trash; and will show you plainly that no improvement has been made, in any one art or science, these last seventeen hundred years."[365]

His son, therefore, was to waste no time in the society of pedants, but accompanied by a travelling tutor, was to begin studying life first-hand at the Courts. His book-learning was to go side by side with the study of manners:

"Courts and Camps are the only places to learn the world in. There alone all kinds of characters resort, and human nature is seen in all the various shapes and modes ... whereas, in all other places, one local mode generally prevails."[366]

Moreover, the earl did not think that a company wholly composed of men of learning could be called good company. "They cannot have the easy manners and tournure of the world, as they do not live in it." And an engaging address, "an insinuating behaviour," was to be sought for early in life, and, at the same time, with the solid parts of learning. "The Scholar, without good breeding, is a Pedant: the Philosopher, a Cynic: the Soldier, a Brute: and every man disagreeable."[367]

The five years of young Stanhope's travel were carefully distributed as follows: a year in Lausanne,[368] for the rudiments of languages; a year in Leipsic, for a thorough grounding in history and jurisprudence; a year spent in visits to such cities as Berlin, Dresden, and Vienna, for a view of the different Courts; one in Italy, to get rid of the manners of Germany; and one in Paris, to give him the final polish, the supreme touch, of gentlemanly complaisance, politeness, and ease.

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