Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education…

The sentence opens “Of Travel”, one of Bacon’s Essays, and the rest of the piece is practical advice for the younger sort. Whoever goes into a country before he has “some entrance into the language”, Bacon says, “goeth to school, and not to travel”. Young men should go under a tutor or “grave servant” who knows the language and the country. The essay goes on to recommend keeping a diary, visiting courts, churches, libraries and fortifications, avoiding quarrels, and, once home, corresponding with the best acquaintances made abroad without exchanging one’s own manners for foreign ones.

Bacon wrote the essay for the last edition of his Essays, in 1625, when the educational tour of the Continent was becoming an English custom. He himself had spent nearly three years in France in the late 1570s, with the English ambassador.

The opening balance, education for the young and experience for the old, is the part that survived; it is quoted in guidebooks and graduation speeches, usually without the sober instructions that follow.

Essays, “Of Travel”, opening words, 1625

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work