BEFORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
to secure, and he moved from town to town with as little delay as possible along the route. And whether in town or country he could not help realizing that something was out of joint. Keen observers, like Chesterfield, already foresaw revolution.
Yet the thirty or forty years before 1789 — the very years that most concern us — were far more prosperous than the first half of the century, and had there been a more efficient administration of government and a more equitable distribution of the burdens of public life, it is possible that France would have escaped the horrors of the Revolution, as England herself did.
But the average English tourist was no prophet nor a very competent judge of the significance of what he saw. With the less attractive sides of French life and official administration he inevitably came more or less in contact as he journeyed across country, but, unless he was a trained observer like Arthur Young, he noted only incidental defects, and those mainly as they affected his personal comfort. Of the deep discontent that smouldered in every part of France he hardly suspected the existence, and he regarded the schemes for social reform, so popular in the salons, chiefly as entertaining speculations that must not be taken too seriously. The glitter and the gayety of French society blinded his eyes. But most of the world was blind in those days, and he was but a passing stranger.
IV
Of all the countries visited on the grand tour, the condition of Italy was, from many points of view, the least enviable. Her decline was the favorite topic of eighteenth-century tourists and poets. There had, indeed, been a sad falling-off since her days of ancient greatness. In the time of the Roman Empire Italy had been the recognized leader of the world, but when the barbarian invasions overwhelmed the Empire the country became the successive prey of the strongest. The brilliant period of the Renais-
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