DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61893#0078
52 PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE.
because it is founded upon the change
which has taken place in the higher classes
on the continent during the last ten years.
The court of Versailles was formerly consi-
dered as the most polished court in the
world, and the state of society at Paris, as
well as at Rome and Turin, was supposed
to have reached a very high degree of re-
finement. The principal object of travel-
ling then was to acquire, in some accom-
plished society, that ease and those graces
which constitute the perfection of good
breeding, and which were seldom, it was
then fancied, to be discovered in the man-
ners of a home-bred Englishman. How
far this opinion was true it is not my in-
tention to examine, but it was very generally
admitted, and in consequence no young
man of rank was deemed qualified to make
an advantageous entrance into the world
till, by a considerable residence in the ca-
pitals mentioned above, he had worn off
because it is founded upon the change
which has taken place in the higher classes
on the continent during the last ten years.
The court of Versailles was formerly consi-
dered as the most polished court in the
world, and the state of society at Paris, as
well as at Rome and Turin, was supposed
to have reached a very high degree of re-
finement. The principal object of travel-
ling then was to acquire, in some accom-
plished society, that ease and those graces
which constitute the perfection of good
breeding, and which were seldom, it was
then fancied, to be discovered in the man-
ners of a home-bred Englishman. How
far this opinion was true it is not my in-
tention to examine, but it was very generally
admitted, and in consequence no young
man of rank was deemed qualified to make
an advantageous entrance into the world
till, by a considerable residence in the ca-
pitals mentioned above, he had worn off