Such was the plan of a Grand Tour laid down by one of the first gentlemen of Europe. It remains one of the best expressions of the social influence of France upon England, and for that reason properly belongs to the seventeenth century more than to the Georgian era in which the letters were written. Chesterfield might be called the last of the courtiers. He believed in accomplishments and personal elegance as a means of advancing oneself in the world, long after the Court had ceased to care for such qualities, or to be of much account in the destinies of leading Englishmen. Republicanism was in the air. Chesterfield was thinking of the France of his youth; but France had changed. In 1765, Horace Walpole was depressed by the solemnity and austerity of French society. Their style of conversation was serious, pedantic, and seldom animated except by a dispute on some philosophic subject.[375] In fact, Chesterfield was admiring the France of Louis the Fourteenth long after "Le Soleil" had set, and the country was sombre. It was the eve of the day when France was to imitate the democratic ideals of England. England, at last, instead of being on the outskirts of civilization, was coming to be the most powerful, respected, and enlightened country in Europe. When that day dawned, Englishmen no longer sought the Continent in the spirit of the Elizabethans--the spirit which aimed at being "A citizen of the whole world."
During the several generations when the Stuarts communicated their love of France to the aristocracy of England, there was, as we might suppose, a steady undercurrent of protest against this Gallic influence. A returning traveller would be pursued by the rabble of London, who, sighting his French periwig and foreign gestures, would pelt his coach with gutter-dirt, squibs, roots and rams-horns, and run after it shouting "French Dogs! French Dogs! A Mounser! A Mounser!"[376] Between the courtiers and the true-born Englishman there was no great sympathy in the matter of foreign culture. The courtiers too often took towards deep-seated English customs the irreverent attitude of their master, Charles II.--known to remark that it was the roast beef and reading of the holy Scriptures that caused the noted sadness of the English.[377] The true-born Englishman retorted with many a jibe at the "gay, giddy, brisk, insipid fool," who thought of nothing but clothes and garnitures, despised roast beef, and called his old friends ruffians and rustics; or at the rake who "has not been come from France above three months and here he has debauch'd four women and fought five duels." The playwrights could always secure an audience by a skilful portrait of an "English Mounsieur" such as Sir Fopling Flutter, who "went to Paris a plain bashful English Blockhead and returned a fine undertaking French Fop."[378]