THE TOURIST AND THE TUTOR
he observes also: "It would be arrogance in anybody to dispute the right which every free-born Englishman has to follow his own inclination in this particular: Yet when people wish to avoid the company of strangers, it strikes me that they might indulge their fancy as completely at home as abroad; and while they continue in that humour, I cannot help thinking that they might save themselves the inconveniency and expense of travelling."[1]
Defects of temperament and education, the Englishman undoubtedly had. He too readily assumed that what he had been taught to approve was the sole standard of truth. But foreigners of discernment were bound to recognize the sterling character of the better English travelers. Englishmen as a class had a reputation for fair dealing, and for keeping their promises. Rightly enough, as Trevelyan says, was the British name venerated on the Continent.[2]
V
We have still one important matter to consider, and that is the eighteenth-century tourist's estimate of medieval architecture. As every one knows, the eighteenth century passed through a revolution in taste as well as in systems of government. The man who had come to maturity before 1760 continued in the main to apply the old standards, even in the last third of the century. And even the younger men began only here and there to see merit in buildings that had for generations been despised.
Naturally enough, to us of the twentieth century the judgments of most eighteenth-century travelers in matters of art and architecture seem strangely narrow and conventional. They commonly admire uncritically, or if they find fault, they judge by standards that to our time appear absurdly false.[3] A multitude of things that the modern traveler counts of the highest value are to earlier tourists matters of supreme indifference. In place of an intelligent description of the buildings of a town, they often give a mere catalogue, betraying no personal
135
- ↑ Ibid., p. 226.
- ↑ Early History of Charles James Fox, p. 274.
- ↑ For example, when in Paris, Horace Walpole goes into raptures over Lesueur's pictures illustrating the life of St. Bruno. "But sure they are amazing! I don't know what Raphael may be in Rome, but these pictures excel all I have seen in Paris and England." Letters, i, 19.
