Italy, but as the seventeenth century advanced the conditions they found
there made that country less attractive than France. The fact that the
average Englishman was a Protestant divided him from his compeers in
Italy and damped social intercourse. He was received courteously and
formally by the Italian princes, perhaps, for the sake of his political
uncle or cousin in England, but inner distrust and suspicion blighted
any real friendship. Unless the Englishman was one of those who had a
secret, half-acknowledged allegiance to Romanism, there could not, in
the age of the Puritans, be much comfortable affection between him and
the Italians. The beautiful youth, John Milton, as the author of
excellent Latin verse, was welcomed into the literary life of Florence,
to be sure, and there were other unusual cases, but the typical
traveller of Stuart times was the young gentleman who was sent to France
to learn the graces, with a view to making his fortune at Court, even as
his widowed mother sent George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham.
The Englishmen who travelled for "the complete polishing of their parts"
continued to visit Italy, to satisfy their curiosity, but it was rather
in the mood of the sight-seer. Only malcontents, at odds with their
native land, like Bothwell, or the Earl of Arundel, or Leicester's
disinherited son, made prolonged residence in Italy. Aspiring youth,
seeking a social education, for the most part hurried to France.

For it was not only a sense of being surrounded by enemies which during
the seventeenth century somewhat weakened the Englishman's allegiance to
Italy, but the increasing attractiveness of another country. By 1616 it
was said of France that "Unto no other countrie, so much as unto this,
doth swarme and flow yearly from all Christian nations, such a
multitude, and concourse of young Gentlemen, Marchants, and other sorts
of men: some, drawen from their Parentes bosoms by desire of learning;
some, rare Science, or new conceites; some by pleasure; and others