Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education — John Shaqi
Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of EducationBates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
History
Touring in 1600: A Study in the Development of Travel as a Means of Education
Bates, E. S. (Ernest Stuart)
Europe -- Description and travel; Europe -- Social life and customs; Travel -- History
Inseparable from political is religious self-exile. What happened very
often in England was this. A youngster is seized with that belief in
the likelihood of an ideal life elsewhere and that desire for a change,
which are characteristic of the age of twenty. The theological cast of
the age gives the former a religious bias. He escapes. After a time
it seems to him that human characteristics have the upper hand of the
apostolic, even in Roman Catholics, to a greater extent than he once
believed, and that he would like to go home. He lands, is questioned
by the Mayor, reported on to the Privy Council, in which report his
experiences are to be found summarised.
One class of men, however, which might be expected to provide many
examples, is for the most part absent,—missionaries,—occupied at home
converting each other at this date, or re-converting themselves. The
chief, in fact, the Jesuits, were confined each one to his nation by
order, and only in respect of their early training days do they appear
as foreigners abroad. Acknowledgements are due, on the other hand,
for information received, to captives set free, soldiers, artists,
herbalists, antiquaries, and even to those who, so far as we know, only
looked on, like Shakespeare; and to many others led abroad by special
reasons, such as the Italian Marquis who felt it necessary for him to
have a long holiday after the privations of Lent.
But with all these varieties of tourist, we still have not come to
the Average Tourist. The type is extinct, killed by reference-books,
telegraphy, and democracy. For the Average Tourist left his fatherland
to get information which he could not get at home, and he wanted this
information because he was a junior member of the aristocracy, at that
time the governing class more exclusively than at present. In feudal
days isolation was, comparatively, taken for granted, and the fact of
that voluntary isolation implied many hindrances to touring. The need
of acquiring information of every kind that affected political action
had been therefore less realised and the difficulty of acquiring it
greater. These years near 1600 are the years of transition, transition
to a custom for travellers to
... seek their place through storms,
In passing many seas for many forms
Of foreign government, endure the pain
Of many faces seeing, and the gain
That strangers make of their strange-loving humours:
Learn tongues; keep note-books; all to feed the tumours
Of vain discourse at home, or serve the course
Of state employment....[5]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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