Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/76

Rh the "vile custome of Tobacco taking." The advice to colonists not to let their government depend upon too many counsellors at home, "but upon a temperate number only," doubtless reflects Bacon's own experience of the unwieldy committee of noblemen and gentlemen who tried to govern the planters of Virginia from the safe and uninformed distance of London.

"Travel," says Bacon, "in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience." His own travels, as we know, were "a part of education," and they extended no farther than France, nor beyond his eighteenth year. After that he was too busy and for many years too poor to travel. But the essay Of Travel shows that he had profited by the travels of others, and especially by those of his brother, Anthony, who wandered about the continent, chiefly in France, for the eleven or twelve years between 1579 and 1592. By the middle of Elizabeth's reign, it had become the fashion for noblemen's sons and young men of family to travel to complete their education. It was expensive education, for the conditions of travel were such that the young man had to be accompanied by a tutor and by servants. The only means of transportation were horses for land travel and boats where waterways were available. Young men, and older men who could stand it, rode horseback day after day. The letters of the poet, Francis Davison, to his father, Secretary Davison, make known what difficulties the sons of gentlemen met with when Rh