On comparing these instructions with those of the sixteenth century, one is struck with the emphasis they lay upon drawing and "limning." This is what we would expect in the seventeenth century, when an interest in pictures, statues, and architecture was a distinguishing feature of a gentleman. The Marquis de Seignelay, sent on a tour in 1617 by his father Colbert, was accompanied by a painter and an architect charged to make him understand the beauties of Italian art.[359] Antoine Delahaute, making the Grand Tour with an Abbé for a governor, carried with him an artist as well, so that when he came upon a fine site, he ordered the chaise to be stopped, and the view to be drawn by the obedient draughtsman.[360] Not only did gentlemen study to appreciate pictures, but they strove themselves to draw and paint. In the travels of George Sandys[361] (edition 1615), may be seen a woodcut of travellers, in the costume of Henry of Navarre, sketching at the side of Lake Avernus. To take out one's memorandum-book and make a sketch of a charming prospect, was the usual thing before the camera was invented. "Before I went to bed I took a landscape of this pleasant terrace," says Evelyn in Roane.[362] At Tournon, where he saw a very strong castle under a high precipice, "The prospect was so tempting that I could not forbear designing it with my crayon."[363] Consequently, we find instructions for travellers reflecting the tastes of the time: Gerbier's _Subsidium Peregrinantibus_, for instance, insisting on a knowledge of "Perspective, Sculpture, Architecture and Pictures," as among the requisites of a polite education, lays great stress on the identification and survey of works of art as one of the main duties of a traveller.[364]
Significant as are the instructions of Gerbier, Lassels, and others of this period, there are some directions for an education abroad which are more interesting than these products of professional tutors--instructions written by one who was himself the perfect gentleman of his day. The Earl of Chesterfield's letters to his son define the purpose of a foreign education with a freedom which is lacking in the book of a governor who writes for the public eye. Though the contents of the letters are familiar to everyone, their connection with travel for "cultum animi" has hitherto, I think, been overlooked.