the view to be drawn by the obedient
draughtsman.[360] Not only did gentlemen study to appreciate pictures,
but they strove themselves to draw and paint. In the travels of George
Sandys[361] (edition 1615), may be seen a woodcut of travellers, in the
costume of Henry of Navarre, sketching at the side of Lake Avernus. To
take out one's memorandum-book and make a sketch of a charming prospect,
was the usual thing before the camera was invented. "Before I went to
bed I took a landscape of this pleasant terrace," says Evelyn in
Roane.[362] At Tournon, where he saw a very strong castle under a high
precipice, "The prospect was so tempting that I could not forbear
designing it with my crayon."[363] Consequently, we find instructions
for travellers reflecting the tastes of the time: Gerbier's _Subsidium
Peregrinantibus_, for instance, insisting on a knowledge of
"Perspective, Sculpture, Architecture and Pictures," as among the
requisites of a polite education, lays great stress on the
identification and survey of works of art as one of the main duties of a
traveller.[364]

Significant as are the instructions of Gerbier, Lassels, and others of
this period, there are some directions for an education abroad which
are more interesting than these products of professional
tutors--instructions written by one who was himself the perfect
gentleman of his day. The Earl of Chesterfield's letters to his son
define the purpose of a foreign education with a freedom which is
lacking in the book of a governor who writes for the public eye. Though
the contents of the letters are familiar to everyone, their connection
with travel for "cultum animi" has hitherto, I think, been overlooked.

It will be remembered that the earl sent his son abroad at the age of
fourteen to study for five years on the Continent, and to acquire a
better preparation for life than Oxford or Cambridge could offer. Of
these universities Chesterfield had a low opinion. He could not
sufficiently scorn an education which did not prevent a man from being
flurried at his Presentation to the King. He remembered that he himself,
when he was first introduced into good company, with all the awkwardness
and rust of Cambridge about him, was frightened out of his wits. At
Cambridge he "had acquired among the pedants of an illiberal seminary a
turn for satire and contempt, and a strong tendency to argumentation and
contradiction," which was a hindrance to his progress in the polite