What is this travelling? I do not ask in regard to merchants, whom necessity obliges to travel and to tarry long from home for the sake of their own trade and often of our benefit, nor in regard to soldiers, who when there is peace at home must go abroad to learn in foreign wars how to defend their country when it is necessary. Nor do I refer to such travellers as Solon, or Pythagoras, or Plato, who sought knowledge where it was, in order to bring it where it was not. We have no need to travel in search of learning as they did. We have at this day, thanks to printing, as much of that as any country needs to have,--nay, as much as the ancient world ever possessed, if we would use it aright. And young gentlemen, if they made the best use of their wealth, might procure and maintain such excellent masters and companions and libraries, that they might acquire all the best learning far better by studying quietly at home than by stirring about, if the desire for knowledge were the cause of their travelling. And this excuse is made even by people of meaner rank, who love to look abroad for instruction that they could get quite well at home from competent persons who never crossed the seas. If there be defects in our own country, they can be remedied out of our own resources by giving good heed to the matter, without the need of borrowing from other lands. What, then, is travel, interrupting education as it does, and raising the question whether young gentlemen in choosing it are benefiting their country and themselves? To travel is to see countries abroad, to mark their singularities, to learn their languages, and to return thence with an equipment of wisdom that will serve the needs of one’s own country. There may be some who gain all these advantages from travel; but for one whose natural excellence and virtue will turn such a hazardous experience to profit, there are many to whom it will prove pernicious, owing to their impetuous temper and their command of money beyond the discretion of their years. And while these are engaged in travel, what might they have been acquiring at home? Sounder learning, the same study of language, and, above all, the love of their native land, which groweth by familiarity, but is mightily impaired by absence and an acquired fancy for foreign customs.