170 Mr. Clifford. [FEB- 



core. It was from this school that the Charles the Second's sto'ck was 

 propagated through England; that popery lost its repulsiveness to the 

 British statesman ; that slavery, its inseparable companion, was gradually 

 sliding its way into the constitution ; that Walpole was enabled to make 

 his infamous and impious boast, that " Every man had his price/' and that 

 Chesterfield's Letters did not put their writer in the pillory. 



Pope, in some of his fine lines, describes the travelled man of his day, and 

 the character was but little changed long afterwards, we quote from 

 memory, and imperfectly. 



. " He travelled Europe round, 



And gathered every vice on Christian ground: 

 Saw every court, heard every king declare 

 His royal sense of operas, and the fair. 

 Till home regains him, perfectly well bred, 

 With nothing but a Solo in his head, 

 Stol'n from a duel, followed by a nun, 

 And, if a Borough choose him, not undone" 



The Revolutionary war put a stop to this intercourse, and the character 

 of the higher orders of England became from that moment of a 

 manlier, more intelligent, and more elevated spirit. The frivolities 

 of the Continent were cut off from us, a wall of iron was suddenly 

 thrown up between what remained to us of idle opulence and what 

 remained to it of easy temptation, and, before that wall was broken down, 

 there was time for the follies of the past age to perish out of our 

 memories, to lose their hold on the fashionable life of England, and with 

 it to lose their power of evil. 



Our men of education and rank travelled in the interval, but it was into 

 countries divested of the profligate indulgencies that had made up the life 

 of the old roues of the grand tour. Classic researches, the curious spectacle 

 of civilization, advancing and barbarism receding in the north ; the natural 

 treasures and wild beauty of the countries bordering on the Baltic ; the 

 strange splendours and ferocious dignity of the Oriental sovereignties ; the 

 imperishable grandeur and lofty recollections of Greece; formed the 

 contemplation and knowledge of our travellers. With nobler subjects and 

 a higher education for feeling and transmitting them, the narratives of 

 British travel became more accurate, intelligent, and vivid ; and we now 

 possess, in our own tongue, a greater extent of interesting and true infor- 

 mation on the general state of the Globe than is to be found in all the 

 languages of all its other nations. 



The observations of a man like Gifford, travelling with the advantages 

 afforded by his association with the heir of one of the most opulent nobJes 

 of England, must have been valuable in whatever age or country they 

 might be formed. But it was not the fashion of the day to publish 

 travels. Lord Sandwich's " Voyage up the Mediterranean,''' was 

 almost the only tour written by a man of condition ; and the hundreds 

 and thousands of tutors, not ill-named bear-leadei s, who danced their noble 

 pupils about the courts, thought that they had done all that could be 

 expected of mortal man, when they brought their future patron home 

 unamerced in life or limb, not utterly scandalized in character, nor 

 incurably decayed in constitution. 



Gifford's first attempt at public notice, had been " Proposals for a Trans- 

 lation of Juvenal," by subscription. It was begun early, probably, in his 

 College life. But the interruptions of travel, studies, ill-health, the various 



