"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]
These academies were one of the chief attractions which France had for
the gentry of England in the seventeenth century. The first one was
founded by Pluvinel, the grand ecuyer of Henri IV. Pluvinel, returning
from a long apprenticeship to Pignatelli in Naples, made his own
riding-school the best in the world, so that the French no longer had to
journey to Italian masters. He obtained from the king the basement of
the great gallery of the Louvre, and there taught Louis XIII. and other
young nobles of the Court - amongst them the Marquis du Chillon,
afterwards Cardinal Richelieu - to ride the great horse.[249] Such was
the success of his manege that he annexed masters to teach his pupils
dancing, vaulting, and swordsmanship, as well as drawing and
mathematics, till he had rounded out what was considered a complete
education for a chevalier.
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