In A Word, They Live To And Within Themselves, And Their Nearest Neighbors Do Not Know Whether They Eat And Drink Or No."[386]

Not only were the recreations of their country neighbours violent and unrefined, according to the English Messieurs, but that

Preoccupation with local government, which was the chief duty of the country gentleman, was beyond the capacity of those who by living abroad had learned little of the laws and customs of their own country. Clarendon draws a sad picture of the return of the native who was ashamed to be present at the public and private meetings for the administration of justice, because he had spent in dancing the time when he might have been storing knowledge, and who now passed his days a-bed, reading French romances of which he was tired.

Locke also set forth the fallacies of the Grand Tour in his Essay of Education. He admitted that fencing and riding the Great Horse were looked upon as "so necessary parts of breeding that it would be thought a great omission to neglect them," but he questioned whether riding the Great Horse was "of moment enough to be made a business of."[387] Fencing, he pointed out, has very little to do with civil life, and is of no use in real warfare, while music "wastes so much of a young man's time, to gain but a moderate skill in it, and engages often in such odd company, that many think it much better spared."[388] But the feature of travel which was most mercilessly analysed by Locke was the Governor. He exposed the futility of sending a boy abroad to gain experience and to mingle with good society while he was so young as to need a guardian. For at the age when most boys were abroad - that is, from sixteen to twenty-two - they thought themselves too much men to be governed by others, and yet had not experience and prudence enough to govern themselves. Under the shelter of a Governor they were excused from being accountable for their own conduct and very seldom troubled themselves with inquiries or with making useful observations of their own.

While the Governor robbed his pupil of life's responsibilities on one hand, he hampered him, on the other, in any efforts to get into good company:

"I ask amongst our young men that go abroad under tutors what one is there of an hundred, that ever visits any person of quality? much less makes an acquaintance with such from whose conversation he may learn what is good breeding in that country and what is worth observation in it.... Nor indeed is it to be wondered. For men of worth and parts will not easily admit the familiarity of boys who yet need the care of a tutor: though a young gentleman and stranger, appearing like a man, and shewing a desire to inform himself in the customs, laws, and government of the country he is in, will find welcome, assistance and entertainment everywhere."[389]

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