number of news-journals
and gazettes. As for learning the French language, there had been no
lack of competent teachers since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
in 1685 sent French Protestant refugees swarming across the channel to
find some sort of living in England. Therefore the spirit of
acquisitiveness dwindled and died down, in the absence of any strong
need to study abroad, and an idle, frivolous, darting, capricious spirit
controlled the aristocratic tourist. Horace Walpole on his travels spent
his time in a way that would have been censured by the Elizabethans. He
rushed everywhere, played cards, danced through the streets of Rheims
before the ladies' coaches, and hailed with delight every acquaintance
from England. What would Sir Philip Sidney have thought of the mode of
life Walpole draws in this letter:

"About two days ago, about four o'clock in the afternoon ... as we were
picking our teeth round a littered table and in a crumby room, Gray[395]
in an undress, Mr Conway in a morning-grey coat and I in a trim white
night-gown and slippers, very much out of order, with a very little
cold, a message discomposed us all of a sudden, with a service to Mr
Walpole from Mr More, and that, if he pleased, he would wait on Mr
Walpole. We scuttle upstairs in great confusion, but with no other
damage than the flinging down two or three glasses and the dropping a
slipper by the way. Having ordered the room to be cleaned out, and sent
a very civil response to Mr More, we began to consider who Mr More might
be."[396]

In the tour of Walpole and Gray one may see a change in the interest of
travel; how the romantic spirit had already ousted the humanistic love
of men and cities. As he drifted through Europe Gray took little
interest in history or in the intricacies of human character. He would
not be bothered by going to Courts with Walpole, or if he did he stood
in the corner of the ballroom and looked on while Walpole danced. What
he cared for was La Grande Chartreuse, with its cliffs and pines and
torrents and hanging woods.[397] He is the forerunner of the Byronic
traveller who delighted in the terrific aspects of nature and disdained
mankind. Different indeed was the genial heart of Howell, who was at
pains to hire lodgings in Paris with windows opening on the street, that
he might study every passerby,[398] but who spoke of mountains in Spain
in a casual way as "not so high and hideous as the Alps," or as
"uncouth,