Letter LXII

Summary

My dear Lady G.

The Remarks which, your Cousin Fielding tells you, I have made on the Subject of young Gentlemens Travelling, and which you request me to communicate to you, are Part of a little Book upon Education, which I wrote for Mr. B.'s Correction and Amendment, on occasion of his putting Mr. Locke's Treatise on that Subject into my Hands, and requiring my Observations upon it.

I cannot flatter myself, that they will answer your Expectation; for I am sensible they must be unworthy even of the Opportunities I have had in the Excursions, in which I have been indulg’d by the best of Gentlemen.

But your Requests are so many Laws to me; and I will give you a short Abstract of what I read to Miss Fielding, who has so greatly over-rated it to you.

That Gentleman's Book contains many excellent Rules on the Subject of Education: But this of Travel1 I will only refer you to at present. You will there see his Objections against the Age at which young Gentlemen are sent abroad, from Sixteen to Twenty-one, the Time in all their Lives, he says, in which young Men are the least suited to these Improvements, and in which they have the least Fence and Guard against their Passions.

The Age he proposes is from Seven to Fourteen, because of the Advantage they will then have to master Foreign Languages, and to form the Tongue to their true Accents, as well as that then they will be easier directed by their Tutors or Governors. Or else he proposes that more sedate Time of Life, when the Gentleman is able to travel without a Tutor, and to make his own Observations; and when he is thoroughly acquainted with the Laws and Fashions, the natural and moral Advantages and Defects of his own Country; by which means, as Mr. Locke wisely observes, the Traveller will have something to exchange with those abroad, from whose Conversation he hopes to reap any Knowlege. This Gentleman supports his Opinion by excellent Reasons, to which I refer you.