THE TOURIST AND THE TUTOR
with art or history or science or any other serious subject. From the point of view of the wealthy young tourist, under no obligation to earn a living and with no expectation of putting his knowledge of foreign countries to any practical use, there was no pressing need of seeing anything thoroughly.
As might be expected, then, great numbers of travelers were at a loss to know how to spend their time abroad. The hours passed slowly between meals. They soon exhausted what little interest they had in seeing buildings and pictures that they were too ignorant to appreciate. They played cards with one another, took walks or drives into the country, and gathered in crowds to watch the arriving and departing diligences. They missed the familiar English sights, and were as uneasy as cats in a strange garret. Englishmen of this type traveled in order to spend their money and ease a vacant mind, and they were as dull and inane at Versailles or in the Coliseum as they were at St. James's or at Newmarket. In so far as they had any curiosity, it was reserved for "Palaces, gardens, statues, pictures, antiquities, and productions of art,"[1] which they viewed in a hasty fashion. Insufficiently equipped to appreciate the significance of much that they saw, they drifted from one city to another, and were little the wiser for their trouble.
Our age is commonly described as a time of restless hurry, but we can hardly exceed the haste with which eighteenth-century travelers posted through interesting cities without stopping. The small distance that they covered in a day or week makes their progress as a whole seem leisurely,[2] but the remoteness of Rome or Vienna compelled them to push onward with little opportunity of seeing on the way many sights that were almost under their eyes. In many cases tourists neglected important sights through sheer indifference. Evelyn cites a typical instance. At Vicenza, says he, "I would fain have visited a Palace, called the Rotunda, which was a mile out of town, belonging to Count Martio Capra; but one of our companions hastening to be
106
- ↑ Ibid., p. 13.
- ↑ As illustrating the slowness of travel we may note that when George III was taken ill in 1788 a messenger was dispatched by the Duke of Portland to summon Charles James Fox, who was then at Bologna. "He at once set out on his return, and, after nine days' incessant travelling, arrived in London on November 24." Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century, v, 381.
