our common friends, fitting together in my library, and entering on the fubject in the following manner. LORD SHAFTESBURY. AND is not TRAVELLING then, in your opinion, one of the best of those methods, which can be taken to polish and form the manners of our liberal youth, and to fit them for the business and conversation of the world? MR. LOCKE. I THINK not. I fee but little good, in proportion to the time it takes up, that can be drawn from it, under any management; but, in the way in which it commonly is and must be conducted, fo long as travel is confidered as a part of early education, I fee nothing but mifchiefs fpring from it. LORD SHAFTESBURY. WHAT! neceffarily fpring from it? And is there no way to ftop their growth; or 9 or at least prevent their choking the good plants, which that foil is capable of producing? MR. LOCKE. THIS indeed I must not absolutely affirm: your Lordship's example, I confess, ftands in my way. But if your own education, which was conducted in this form, and creates a prejudice for it, be pleaded against me, I may ftill fay, that the argument extends no further than to qualify the affertion; and that, as in other cafes, the rule is general, though with fome exceptions. LORD SHAFTESBURY. It was not my meaning to put your politeness to this proof. I would even take no advantage of the exception which you might confent to make in the cafe of many other travellers, who have, doubtless, a better claim, than myself, to this indulgence. What I would gladly know of you, is, Whether, in general, Travel be not an excellent fchool for our ingenuous and noble youth; and whether it may not, on the whole, deserve the countenance of a philofopher, who underftands the world, and has himself been formed by it? MR. LOCKE. YOUR Lordship, I think, will do well to put philofophy out of the question. There is fo much to be faid againft Travel in that view, that the matter would clearly be determined against you. It is by other rules, and what are called the maxims of the world (which your Lordship understands too well, to join them with Philofophy) that the advocate for travelling must demand to have his cause tried, if he would hope to come off, in the difpute, with any advantage. LORD SHAFTESBURY. YET philofophy was not always of this mind. You know, when the best proficients proficients in that feience gave a countenance to this practice, by their own example; a good part of their life was fpent in foreign countries; and they did not presume to fet up for masters of wif dom, till experience and much infight into the manners of men had qualified them for that great office. Hence they became the ableft and wifeft men of the old world; and their wisdom was not in those days of the lefs account for the politeness, that was mixed with it. MR. LOCKE.. THOSE wife men might have their reasons for this different practice. They most of them, I think, fet up for Politicians and Legiflators, as well as Philofophers; and in that infancy of arts and commerce, when diftant nations had small intercourse with each other, it might be of real advantage to them, at least it might ferve their reputation with the people, to spend fome years in voyages, to fuch such countries as were in the highest fame for their wisdom or good government. BESIDES, the Sages of thofe times made a wondrous mystery of their wifdom: a fure fign, perhaps, that they were not over-stocked with it. It was confined to certain schools and fraternities; or was locked up ftill more closely in the breasts of particular perfons. Knowledge was not then diffused in books and general converfation, as amongst us, but was to be obtained by frequenting the academies or houses of those privileged men, who, by a thousand ambitious arts, had drawn to themselves the applaufe and veneration of the rest of the world. ALL this might be faid in favour of your Lordship's old Sages. Yet one of them, who deferved that name the best, was no great Traveller. I remember to have read, that SOCRATES had never ftirred out of Athens; and that, when his |