A governor became increasingly necessary as the arbiter of what was modish for families whose connection with the fashionable world was slight.  He assumed airs of authority, and took to writing books on how the Grand Tour should be made.  Such is The Voyage of Italy, with Instructions concerning Travel, by Richard Lassels, Gent., who “travelled through Italy Five times, as Tutor to several of the English Nobility and Gentry."[314] Lassels, in reciting the benefits of travel, plays upon that growing sensitiveness of the country gentleman about his innocent peculiarities:  “The Country Lord that never saw anybody but his Father’s Tenants and M. Parson, and never read anything but John Stow, and Speed; thinks the Land’s-end to be the World’s-end; and that all solid greatness, next unto a great Pasty, consists in a great Fire, and a great estate;” or, “My Country gentleman that never travelled, can scarce go to London without making his Will, at least without wetting his hand-kerchief."[315]

The Grand Tour, of course, is the remedy for these weaknesses—­especially under the direction of a wise governor.  More care should go to choosing that governor than to any other retainer.  For lacqueys and footmen “are like his Galoshooes, which he leaves at the doors of those he visits,” but his governor is like his shirt, always next him, and should therefore be of the best material.  The revelation of bad governors in Lassels’ instructions are enough to make one recoil from the Grand Tour altogether.  These “needy bold men” led pupils to Geneva, where the pupils lost all their true English allegiance and respect for monarchy; they kept them in dull provincial cities where the governor’s wife or mistress happened to live.  “Others have been observed to sell their pupils to Masters of exercises, and to have made them believe that the worst Academies were the best, because they were the best to the cunning Governour, who had ten pound a man for every one he could draw thither:  Others I have known who would have married their Pupils in France without their Parents’ knowledge";[316] ... and so forth, with other more lurid examples.

The difficulties of procuring the right sort of governor were hardly exaggerated by Lassels.  The Duke of Ormond’s grandson had just such a dishonest tutor as described—­one who instead of showing the Earl of Ossory the world, carried him among his own relations, and “buried” him at Orange.[317] It seems odd, at first sight, that the Earl of Salisbury’s son should be entrusted to Sir John Finet, who endeared himself to James the First by his remarkable skill in composing “bawdy songs."[318] It astonishes us to read that Lord Clifford’s governor, Mr Beecher, lost his temper at play, and called Sir Walter Chute into the field,[319] or that Sir Walter Raleigh’s son was able to exhibit his governor, Ben Jonson, dead-drunk upon a car, “which he made to be drawn by pioneers through the streets, at every corner showing