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elapsed, that it was discovered, that toleration is the parent of peace, and that the concession of liberty of worship to all classes of sectaries is compatible with the secure existence of a religious establishment.

ART. II.-Instructions for Forreine Travell, shewing by what cours, and in what compasse of time one may take an exact Survey of the Kingdoms and States of Christendom, and arrive to the practicall Knowledge of Languages to good purpose.

Post motum dulcior inde Quies.

London, 1642. 18mo.

The nature of Forreine Travell is very different at present from what it was in the days of the learned and laborious James Howell, the author of this little treatise. In consequence of this change, his ingenious instructions have lost, at the present day, their chance of direct utility, and the profit we intend to derive from them will not forward the views of any tourist whatever. In the time of good King James and his son, intercourse between the different nations of Europe was a slow and solemn thing: communication was difficult, not because obstacles were opposed, but that conveniences were not supplied. Each country had not its national character, perhaps, more strongly marked than at present, but then these peculiarities were matters of less notoriety. Few books of travels were published, and those not at all of a kind to supersede the necessity of ocular observation ;-international posts were not established, and letters were trusted to the occasional opportunities afforded by the passage of acquaintance, or of merchandize; while travelling was a rare event, and, in some sort, deserved its name, implying the notion of labour. It is now, from the facilities afforded by rapidly increasing civilization, a recreation; it was formerly a work of instruction; it is now a toil of a pleasure, where relaxation of the mind, or the amusement of the senses, is looked to rather than tlre invigoration of the character, and the improvement of the faculties. There are two kinds of travelling; the one to see men, the other sights. Ancient travelling, by the deliberateness with which it was carried on, embraced both objects.

The modern plan of division of labour now generally divides these varieties of travel into their two separate kinds. The tra

veller who spends his three years and a half abroad, as in the time of Howell, and gives three years to residence, and six months to locomotion, is the one who may expect to derive instruction from his occupation. Such a man, dividing his time between the acquisition of language, the study of national history and literature, and the instructive pleasures of society, may expect to return with an improved understanding, a more manly character, and a superior knowledge of mankind. The fact of such an absence implies the possession of independence, and with it connexion, rank, and character. The case is somewhat different at present. It is an extraordinary instance of mental blindness to suppose, that the rambling of six or twelve months, from town to town, from province to province, from capital to capital, indulging in all the sensual pleasures each spot affords, and consuming three parts of the time in absolute motion, or else in absolute gazing on inanimate objects, can improve either mind, morals, or even health. In fact, such rambles are undertaken with none of these views, and imply the possession of no one title to respect. Throughout the whole of Howell's little treatise, we are made sensible of the importance which was in his time attributed to travel: the sage admonition, the strict, cau→ tious, and earnest style of our author, give altogether a character of solemnity to the undertaking. The high purposes, such as the eradication of national prejudice, and the preparation for statesman-like conduct; the high rank of the character supposed to travel, for Howell seldom places him under the degree of a nobleman; the extent of his labours, and the calls upon his industry, for he must learn three or four languages, and investigate constitutions, laws, and histories; present, united, a most ludicrous contrast with the insignificance and frivolity of a modern excursion. Alas! the Grand Tour has lost all its grandeur. Its glory is vanished-its honours are in the dust-run down by strings of diligences and the Mail Poste-trampled under foot by crowds of pedestrian, equestrian, and vehicular vagabonds, making their way by means of a guide-book and a Vocabulary. If any man wants "instruction for forreine travell" at this time of day, let him call at Mr. Leigh's shop in the Strand, where he will find information much more to his purpose than James Howell could have afforded him, even though all his folios had been engrossed by this one important subject.

However, something is to be had from Howell still. It is agreeable, if not useful, to know what a traveller was in the days of James and Charles. It is desirable, for many reasons, to ascertain, what, at that time, were the supposed effects of travel upon those who returned home; and it is not a point of slight importance, to collect testimonies as to the national characters of the different nations of Europe at any particular

period. Some, if not all, of these matters, will receive illustration from the extracts we shall make from this little work.

Take, first, Howell's contrast of the French and Spanish character:

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Having passed the Pyrennees, he shall palpably discern (as I have observed in another larger discourse) the suddenest and strangest difference betwixt the genius and garb of two people, though distant but by a very small separation, as betwixt any other upon the surface of the earth. I know Nature delights and triumphs in dissimilitudes; but here, she seems to have industriously, and of set purpose, studied it; for they differ not only accidentally and outwardly in their cloathing and carriage, in their diet, in their speeches and customs, but even essentially in the very faculties of the soul and operations thereof, and in every thing else, religion and the form of a rational creature only excepted; which made Dr. Garcia think to ask a midwife once, whether the Frenchman and Spaniard came forth into the world in the same posture from the womb, or no?

"Go, first, to the operations of the soul: the one is active and mercurial, the other is speculative and saturnine; the one quick and airy, the other slow and heavy; the one discoursive and sociable, the other reserved and thoughtful; the one addicts himself for the most part, to the study of the law and canons, the other to positive and school divinity; the one is creatura sine præterito et futuro, the other hath too much of both; the one is a Prometheus, the other an Epinetheus: the one apprehends and forgets quickly, the other doth both slowly, with a judgment more abstruse and better fixed, et in se reconditum; the one will dispatch the weightiest affairs as he walks along in the streets, or at meals; the other, upon the least occasion of business will retire solemnly to a room, and if a fly chance to hum about him, it will discompose his thoughts, and puzzle him. It is a kind of sickness for a Frenchman to keep a secret long, and all the drugs of Egypt cannot get it out of a Spaniard.

"The French capacity, though it apprehend and assent unto the tenets of faith, yet he resteth not there, but examines them by his own reason, debates the business pro et contra, and so is often gravelled upon the quick-sands of his own brain. The Spaniard, clean contrary, by an implicit faith and general obedience, believes the canons and determination of the church, and presently subjects his understanding thereunto; he sets bounds to all his wisdom and knowledge, and labours to avoid all speculation thereon, fearing, through the frailty of his intellectuals, to fall into some error.

"Go to their garb and clothing; the one wears long hair, the other short; the one goes thin and open clad, the other close and warm, so that although the sun should dart down his rays like lances upon him, yet he could not be brought to open one button of his doublet; the one goes gay without, the other underneath; the one wears his cloak long, the other short, so that one might give him a suppositor with his cloak about him, if need were; the one puts on his doublet first, the other last; the Frenchman buttoneth always down

ward, the Spaniard upward; the one goes high-heeled, the other low and flat, yet looks as high as the other; the one carrieth a comb and looking-glass in his pocket, the other a piece of baize to wipe off the dust of his shoes: and if the one hath a fancy to starch his mustachios, the other hath a leather bigothero to lie upon them all night. The first thing the one pawns, being in necessity, is his shirt, the other his cloak, and so, by degrees his cassock goes off, and then his doublet; the one cares more for the back and outward appearance, the other prefers the belly; the one is constant in his fashion; for the other, 'tis impossible to put him in a constant kind of habit :

:

You may as soon

Cut out a kirtle for the moon.

"Go to their diet: the one drinks watered wine, the other wine watered; the one begins his repast, where the other ends; the one begins with a sallad and light meat, the other concludeth his repast so; the one begins with his boiled, the other with his roast; the Frenchman will eat and talk, and sing sometimes, and so his teeth and tongue go often together, the Spaniard's teeth only walk, and falls closely to it, with as little noise and as solemnly as if he were at mass.

"Go to their gait: the Frenchman walks fast, (as if he had a serjeant always at his heels,) the Spaniard slowly, as if he were newly come out of some quartan ague; the French go up and down the streets confusedly in clusters, the Spaniards, if they be above three, they go two by two, as if they were going a procession; the French lacqueys march behind, the Spaniards before; the one beckons upon you with his hand cast upward, the other downward; the Frenchman will not stick to pull out a pear or some other thing out of his pocket, and eat it as he goes along the street, the Spaniard will starve rather than do so, and would never forgive himself, if he should commit such a rudeness'; the Frenchman, if he spies a lady of his acquaintance, he will make boldly towards her, salute her with a kiss, and offer to usher her by the hand or arm; the Spaniard, upon such an encounter, useth to recoil backward, with his hands hid under his cloak, and for to touch or kiss her, he holds it a rudeness beyond all barbarism, a kind of sacrilege: the Frenchman is best and most proper on horseback, the Spaniard a-foot; the one is good for the onset, the other for a retreat; the one, like the wind in the fable, is full of ruffling and fury, the other, like the sun, when they went to try their strength upon the passenger's cloak; the one takes the ball before the bound, à la volée, the other stayeth for the fall; the one shuffleth his cards better, the other plays his game more cunningly your Frenchman is much the fairer duellist, for when he goeth into the field, he commonly puts off his doublet and opens his breast; the Spaniard, clean contrary, besides his shirt, hath his doublet quilted, his coat of mail, his cassock, and strives to make himself impenetrable.

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"Go to their tune: the one delights in the Ionic, the other altogether in the Doric.

"Go to their speech: the one speaks oft, the other seldom; the

one fast, the other slowly; the one mangleth, cuts off, and eats many letters, the other pronounceth all; the one contracts and enchains his words, and speaks pressingly and short, the other delights in long breathed accents, which he prolates with such pauses, that before he be at the period of his sentences, one might reach a second thought: the one's mind and tongue go commonly together, (and the first comes sometimes in the arrear,) the other's tongue comes flagging a furlong after his mind, in such a distance, that they seldom or never meet and justle one another.

"In fine, Mercury swayeth over the one, and Saturn over the other, insomuch, that, out of the premises, you may infer, that there is an intellectual, political, moral, and natural opposition between them both, in their comportment, fancies, inclinations, humours, and the very understanding, so that one might say, What the one is, the other is not; and in such a visible discrepancy, that if one were fetched from the remotest parts of the earth the sun displayeth his beams upon, yea, from the very Antipodes, he would agree with either better, than they do one with another."

He thus amusingly speaks of the follies of travellers, on their return home:

--

"He must abhor all affectations, all forced postures and compliments; for foreign travel oftentimes makes many to wander from themselves, as well as from their country, and to come back mere mimicks; and so, in going far, to fare worse, and bring back less wit than they carrieth forth; they go out figures (according to the Italian proverb) and return cyphers; they retain the vice of a country, and will discourse learnedly thereon, but pass by and forget the good, their memories being herein like hair-sieves, that keep up the bran, and let go the fine flour. They strive to degenerate as much as they can from Englishmen, and all their talk is still foreigu, or, at least, will bring it to be so, though it be by head and shoulders, magnifying other nations, and derogating from their own: nor can one hardly exchange three words with them at an ordinary, (or elsewhere) but presently they are the other side of the sea, commending either the wines of France, the fruits of Italy, or the oil and sallads of Spain.

"Some also there are, who, by their countenance more than by their carriage, by their diseases more than by their discourses, discover themselves to have been abroad under hot climates.

"Others have a custom to be always relating strange things and wonders, (of the humour of Sir John Mandeville,) and they usually present them to the hearers, through multiplying glasses, and thereby cause the thing to appear far greater than it is in itself; they make mountains of mole-hills, like Charenton-Bridge-Echo, which doubles the sound nine times. Such a traveller was he that reported the Indian fly to be as big as a fox; China birds to be as big as some horses; and their mice to be as big as monkeys; but they have the wit to fetch this far enough off, because the hearer may rather believe it than make a voyage so far to disprove it.

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