Moreover, Emile is not a king, nor am I a god, so that we are not distressed that we cannot imitate Telemachus and Mentor in the good they did; none know better than we how to keep to our own place, none have less desire to leave it.  We know that the same task is allotted to all; that whoever loves what is right with all his heart, and does the right so far as it is in his power, has fulfilled that task.  We know that Telemachus and Mentor are creatures of the imagination.  Emile does not travel in idleness and he does more good than if he were a prince.  If we were kings we should be no greater benefactors.  If we were kings and benefactors we should cause any number of real evils for every apparent good we supposed we were doing.  If we were kings and sages, the first good deed we should desire to perform, for ourselves and for others, would be to abdicate our kingship and return to our present position.

I have said why travel does so little for every one.  What makes it still more barren for the young is the way in which they are sent on their travels.  Tutors, more concerned to amuse than to instruct, take them from town to town, from palace to palace, where if they are men of learning and letters, they make them spend their time in libraries, or visiting antiquaries, or rummaging among old buildings transcribing ancient inscriptions.  In every country they are busy over some other century, as if they were living in another country; so that after they have travelled all over Europe at great expense, a prey to frivolity or tedium, they return, having seen nothing to interest them, and having learnt nothing that could be of any possible use to them.

All capitals are just alike, they are a mixture of all nations and all ways of living; they are not the place in which to study the nations.  Paris and London seem to me the same town.  Their inhabitants have a few prejudices of their own, but each has as many as the other, and all their rules of conduct are the same.  We know the kind of people who will throng the court.  We know the way of living which the crowds of people and the unequal distribution of wealth will produce.  As soon as any one tells me of a town with two hundred thousand people, I know its life already.  What I do not know about it is not worth going there to learn.

To study the genius and character of a nation you should go to the more remote provinces, where there is less stir, less commerce, where strangers seldom travel, where the inhabitants stay in one place, where there are fewer changes of wealth and position.  Take a look at the capital on your way, but go and study the country far away from that capital.  The French are not in Paris, but in Touraine; the English are more English in Mercia than in London, and the Spaniards more Spanish in Galicia than in Madrid.  In these remoter provinces a nation assumes its true character and shows what it really is; there the good or ill effects of the government are best perceived, just as you can measure the arc more exactly at a greater radius.