Page:The grand tour in the eighteenth century by Mead, William Edward.djvu/25

 The grand tour was, at least in intention, not merely a pleasurable round of travel, but an indispensable form of education for young men in the higher ranks of society. When made in approved fashion, in the company of a competent tutor, the grand tour meant a carefully planned journey through France and Italy and a return journey through Germany and the Low Countries. It was commonly necessary, on the way to or from Italy, to cross a portion of Switzerland, or at least some of the mountains belonging to the Alpine chains, but this part of the journey, in so far as the mountains were concerned, was regarded as a disagreeable necessity. Such a tour usually required three years. Multitudes of independent travelers, unhampered by a tutor or by anything besides their ignorance, of course visited the Continent without attempting the conventional round, and many pupils traveling with a tutor spent no more than a year or two abroad, but the allowance of three years was not too long for a leisurely survey of the principal countries and for getting some practical acquaintance with foreign languages.

Those who traveled abroad belonged, as a rule, just as was the case in the sixteenth century, to a picked class, and with their aristocratic temper, their wealth, and their insular characteristics, they presented, along with marked individual differences, a well-defined tourist type. The traits of successive generations of English travelers upon the Continent were early combined to form the well-known Englishman of the Continental stage — a caricature, indeed, but one reproducing many features drawn from life. Even in our time the old type is not altogether extinct, and may be occasionally encountered in a railway carriage or at a mountain inn, but it is daily becoming more rare.

Our main theme is, then, the touring of Englishmen upon the Continent of Europe in the eighteenth century. Practical considerations of space, as well as the actual practice of all but an insignificant fraction of tourists, compel us to limit our view to France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany,