Touring in 1600

    Evelyn, Diary (1645).

The route of the Average Tourist being determined by the considerations above-mentioned, he was naturally directed to those countries whose situation enabled them to influence the course of events in his fatherland, whose development and conditions contained the most pertinent lessons for him as a man and as a statesman, and whose climate, accessibility, and inhabitants were such as hindered travellers least. These countries were: Italy, France, the United Provinces (i. e., Holland), the Empire, the Spanish Netherlands (corresponding to Belgium), England, Poland. This order is that in which they would probably have appeared to arrange themselves according to their importance for the purposes under consideration. The omission of England in the chapter heading is due, of course, to Evelyn having started thence; of the Empire and Poland, to the date at which he is writing, near the close of the Thirty Years' War; a date which, while within the period with which this book has to deal, is later by nearly half a century than the central date, 1600, to which all its undated statements should be taken as referring.

Whatever criticism might have been passed on this order of importance by this or that adviser, not one would have been found to dispute the preëminence of Italy. Whereas now there is no form of human effort in which the inhabitants of Italy have not been equalled or surpassed, it seemed then as if there had never been any in which they had been surpassed and very few in which they had been equalled. So far as Art and antiquities go, there will be no need to persuade anybody of the likelihood of that; nor probably, with regard to venerableness of religion or romance of history. But the very easiness of imagining the supremacy which would have been conceded Italy on these points tends to close the enquiry into the causes of its hold on men in times gone by, and consequently to obscure the fact that Italy then not only stood for all that Italy stands for now, but also in the place, or rather, places, now occupied by the most advanced States in their most advanced aspects; for everything, in fact, that made for progress on the lines considered most feasible or probable at the moment; for progress, not only in culture, but in commerce and commercial methods, in politics, in the science of war, in up-to-date handicraft, and, especially, in worldly wisdom. Even a baby-food was assured of greater respect if made from an Italian recipe, such as the paste made of bread-crumbs, wheat-meal, and olive-oil, of which De Thou nearly died. In short, if the value of Italy as the colonizer of Europe in regard to mental development belonged by this time to the past rather than to the present, its reputation as such must not be ante-dated, as is generally done, and ascribed to the age when it most thoroughly deserved that reputation. Here, on the contrary, as usually, merit and credit are not contemporary.

And there was plenty to deceive those who did not look far below the surface. In discussing politics the newest set-phrases would be those brought into use by Italian writers; "balance of power," "reason of state," etc.; the word "status" itself, as a substitute for "Respublica," was both a sign of the times and of Italian influence.[39 - J. N. Figgis, From Gerson to Grotius, 1907, p. 241.] So with commercial terms, we find, for instance, the word "provvisione" (commission) being used as late as 1648,[40 - Brit. Mus. MS. Harleian, 943, fol. 33.] by an Englishman who had never been to Italy, while the control of Italy over one of the later forms of the Renascence, that of the art of gardening, is indicated by the introduction of the word "florist" from the Italian during the seventeenth century. The only modern author, moreover, whose acquaintance a European schoolboy was certain to make, was the Italian versifier whom Shakespeare calls "good old Mantuan," and even if we look at things from to-day's standpoint the most remarkable professorship of the period would surely be accounted that of Galileo at Padua, 1592-1610. In another respect, too, connected with education, the relative maturity and crudeness of civilisation south and north of the Alps is even more apparent to-day than it was then. The "Trans-alpine" shared more or less Erasmus' belief in the power of words as a means of education, whereas in Italy, and in Italy alone, was it insisted that the influence of environment, personal and physical, is the factor compared to which all else is of but little account. The first theory is abandoned now by all who can afford to do so, the second is that of the best effort of to-day.[41 - W. H. Woodward, Studies in Education, passim, especially p. 172.]

As for the technique of war, more than half-way through the seventeenth century, when Louis XIV wanted the very best available talent to design the completion of the Louvre, it was to Rome that he sent, and the artist, Bernini, is recorded[42 - Gazette des Beaux Arts, IIe période, v, 198.] as saying, to allay jealousy, that there was no need for Frenchmen to be ashamed of an Italian being called in for this purpose, seeing that in the kind of knowledge in which they excelled all Europe, that of war, their teachers were still Italians. And the modernity of the latter's reputation for supremacy in military knowledge is thrown into relief by a remark of Bertrandon de la Brocquière, writing in 1433, taken in conjunction with the above. The latter was a clear-headed Fleming of wide experience who, when drawing up a plan for the right composition of an army which should suffice to drive the Turks back, only mentions French, English, and German soldiers.

As regards applied science, again, we find Evelyn writing of the harbour-works at Genoa, "of all the wonders of Italy, for the art and nature of the design, nothing parallels this." Now Evelyn was certainly not a man to underrate the rest of the wonders of Italy. As for comparisons outside of Italy, all Europe had by his time settled down to compete in the application of science to every-day life. And as to the products of the soil, is it not probable that if, nowadays, Europeans left the soil to take care of itself, and the day-labourer to take care of the seed and the preparation of the product, Italy would regain the first place as a producer of luxuries?

Such points as these, just a few that have chanced to suggest themselves in the course of reading for other purposes, are merely put forward as typical of the relations existing between Italy and the rest of Europe; the Italians themselves admitted their own superiority by the slightly contemptuous meaning that attached itself to their word "Transalpini," and very rare is it to find one of these "Transalpini" taking the view that Sir Philip Sidney and Fynes Moryson did, that the first characteristic of Italy was pretentiousness. On the contrary, it was assumed that little but experience could be so easily, or so satisfactorily, acquired elsewhere. Diverse forms of government, at least, could not be met with elsewhere in the same variety within such narrow limits. The south was what they termed a "province," i. e., a dependency held down by force, belonging to Spain; so, too, was Milan, with its surroundings. In the centre was a monarch, the Pope, who was both elected and "absolute," a term which had a specialised meaning, that of power unlimited except by the extent to which the holder made himself disliked. Further north were free cities, Lucca, Genoa; six hereditary principalities, Tuscany, Mantua, Urbino, Savoy, Modena, Parma; and lastly, the Republic of Venice with its miniature empire in Lombardy. And concerning Venice, there is this to be noted, that it was exhibiting solidity combined with elasticity to a degree all the more astonishing in "an impossible city in an impossible place"; which gave it a position not unlike that of England to-day, namely, that peculiarities of its "constitution" received an even greater degree of respect than they were entitled to and tended to be imitated by constitution-formulators of the period who expected to reproduce what had been achieved by geography and a national temperament, by means of reproducing some of the formulas that the latter had adopted. All of which was of great interest to the Average Tourist; and in consequence, if you happen to be reading one of his accounts of a tour, at the first mention of the word "Doge," skip twelve pages.

What remains to be seen concerning Italy is – what were the details that mainly occupied the foreigner as student there. In which connection the chief fact to be noted is that his stopping-places were invariably towns; and this not in Italy only, but throughout Europe. As regards the Average Tourist, this is fully accounted for by the objects he set before himself, but it is equally true of all. Bathing-places excepted, the only holiday resorts lay in the very last places where we should think of looking for them – in the suburbs. The Riviera, for instance, was no spot to delay in when Mohammedan pirates were forever coasting along in search of Christian slaves; and so on. But the essential explanation is to be sought in a census of Europe. The population of London exceeds that of most sixteenth-century States, and there are London suburbs which house more than any but the biggest sixteenth-century cities. Many villages consisted of no more than three or four houses; and even near Paris, of six or seven or eight; in Spain one might journey eight leagues without seeing a house at all. Whereas, therefore, the difficulty, and the pleasure, of a modern tour consists in escaping from people, the difficulty, and the safety, of all tourists in 1600 lay in reaching them.