Page:The grand tour in the eighteenth century by Mead, William Edward.djvu/149

 cub in his charge, he found his lot the reverse of enviable, and he rarely had the ability to rise above it. Naturally enough, the average tutor, like the average tourist, has vanished without leaving a trace, even in that great necrology, the "Dictionary of National Biography."

In most cases the tutors of English birth were of respectable families, though rarely, if ever, of the social standing of their protégés. As already pointed out, the tourists of the first half of the century belonged mainly to the ranks of the gentry or the nobility. As the century progressed there was an increasing proportion of sons of wealthy tradesmen who made the grand tour, eagerly copying the follies and the vices of young noblemen and striving by their insolent ostentation of riches to pass for gentlemen to the manner born. Young masters of this type, uneasily adjusting themselves to their social position, were the least tractable of pupils. With no family traditions of culture, they commonly treated with contempt the well-meant efforts of the tutor to perform the obligations of his contract. If he was a man of refinement and of conscientious character, he was placed in a position of peculiar embarrassment. If, on the other hand, he was not too scrupulous, and connived at the follies of his pupil, or even abetted them, the young fellow was often in a worse state than if he had ventured abroad alone. Theoretically, nothing could be better than to put the entire time of a competent teacher at the service of a pupil. Men like Leibnitz, Locke, and Rousseau recommended education under a private instructor rather than that obtained in the schools. If all tutors had measured up to the standards set by these great thinkers, there could have been little room for criticism. But not seldom the English tutor was selected because of his familiarity, real or supposed, with the languages of the Continent, though of these he had perhaps only the superficial knowledge possessed by a modern hotel waiter — a few phrases, and nothing more. If he was a Frenchman or a Swiss, he was too often unacquainted with English character and social usages, and entirely unable to control the