Page:The grand tour in the eighteenth century by Mead, William Edward.djvu/153

 turn. The English carried their nationality everywhere with them; and their habits and standards were in sharp contrast with those of the Continent. The Englishman could not be induced to forgo the pleasure of his tour, which would give him opportunity to see famous buildings and statues and pictures, but he was forever vaunting the superiority of his native land and displaying his contempt for the people who had the misfortune to be born elsewhere.

What Englishmen commonly thought of themselves and what foreigners thought of them were two very different things, though nothing is more surprising than the popularity on the Continent of almost everything English in the last third of the century. The self-satisfaction of the English is admirably illustrated in the reflections of the genial Earl of Cork and Orrery, which might add to an Englishman's peace of mind but would hardly be equally pleasing to strangers: "The English are a happy people, if they were truly conscious, or could in any degree convince themselves, of their own felicity. They are the fortunati nimium. Let them travel abroad, not to see fashions, but states, not to taste different wines, but different governments; not to compare laces and velvets, but laws and politics. They will then return home perfectly convinced that England is possessed of more freedom, justice, and happiness, than any other nation under heaven."

In the same vein Eustace remarks a generation later: "The English nation, much to its credit, differs in this respect [i. e., in vilifying human nature] as indeed in many others, very widely from its rival neighbors, and is united with the wise, the good, the great of all ages and countries in a glorious confederacy to support the dignity and the grandeur of our common nature."

The Englishman's attitude toward the Continent was often strangely contradictory. "There are instances," says Dr. Moore, "of Englishmen, who, while on their travels, shock foreigners by an ostentatious preference of England to all the rest of the world, and ridicule the