A MARRIAGE PROJECT. 19 While Sidney was at Oxford, his father and Sir William Cecil (afterwards Lord Burleigh) projected a marriage between him and the fair Anne Cecil. We find the grave Lord Treasurer writing of the scheme in enigmatical fashion. Thus: "I have been pressed with such kind offers of my Lord Deputy, and with the like of my Lord of Leicester, as I have accorded with him upon articles (by a manner of A. B., without any persons named); that if P. S. and A. C. hereafter shall like to marry, then shall H. S., the father of P. S., make assurances, &c.; and then shall W. C., the father of A. C., pay, &c. What may follow I know not; but as I wish P. S. full liberty, so surely A. C. shall have it; and, in the meantime, I will omit no point of friendship"* Anne Cecil eventually was married to, and made unhappy by, Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford, and closed a life of sorrow with an early death. CHAPTER II.-SIDNEY ABROAD. A Continental Tour-At Paris-The Huguenots-Hubert Languet-Sidney travels in Germany-A Friendship-At Vienna-Visits Poland and HungaryTravel, a part of Education-Sidney on Travel-What Sidney gained by Travel. IT was in 1572 that our hero, with mind and body strengthened by assiduous cultivation, obtained the royal license for a continental tour, that he might at once perfect his education, complete his mental training, and familiarize himself with the languages of some of the principal European nations. His uncle, the famous * Wright, "Letters of the Reign of Elizabeth," &c. Earl of Leicester, furnished him with all-powerful credentials, and he travelled in the suite of the Lord Admiral, the Earl of Lincoln, who had been despatched on a special mission to conclude a treaty of alliance with the King of France. Having arrived at Paris, he immediately received the favourable countenance of Walsingham, the English ambassador, and was appointed by Charles IX. one of the gentlemen of his bed-chamber. His personal graces, his accomplishments, his illustrious lineage, naturally introduced him to the most exclusive circles of French society, and he was beset with temptations which ardent and impassioned youth usually finds most difficult to resist. But Sidney endured the ordeal of fire unharmed. He was resolute enough to put away the Circean cup which pleasure held again and again to his lips. His refined intellect eschewed the vices of the Parisian capital. His breeding and education inclined him to adopt the principles, and seek the company of the Huguenot leaders; and it was among the noblest of these that he chose his dearest and most cherished friends. Philip du Plessis Mornay, afterwards Chancellor of France, whom Voltaire in his Henriade depicts as the guardian-angel of King Henry of Navarre; Louis of Navarre, brother of the illustrious William of Orange, and a knight and gentleman sans peur et sans reproche; and Herbert Languet, famous as a scholar and politician; were Sidney's valued companions, and with the latter especially he was on terms of the closest intimacy. Their intercourse was suddenly interrupted by the massacre of St. Bartholomew (August 24), which rendered it unsafe for English Protestants to remain in Paris. Sidney had only escaped on the night of slaughter by taking refuge in the house of Walsingham, the English ambassador, and now, furnished with his safe-conduct, he gladly hastened from the shambles of Paris, and passed through Lorraine into Germany. He was accompanied so far by the learned Dr. Watson, afterwards Bishop of Winchester. At Frankfort he found Languet, who had made his escape thither, and another refugee, one Andrew Weitzel, "a printer of some note." But His intimacy with Languet soon repined into an enduring friendship, despite the disparity of years. the warmth of their Protestantism and their mutual love of letters were bonds which age could not weaken, and from Languet the young Englishman derived much. valuable information. He afterwards acknowledged his indebtedness in the "Arcadia:' "The song I sang old Languet had me taught, Beyond the heavens, far more beyond our wits.' In company with this grave and reverend Protestant, who was appointed the envoy of the Elector of Saxony, he visited Vienna (A.D. 1573), and, charmed by the polished life of that brilliant capital, remained there until late in the ensuing winter. He applied himself, meanwhile, to the practice of horsemanship and martial exercises, in friendly rivalry with young Edward Wotton, brother of the learned Sir Henry, who was afterwards Provost of Eton. For our Elizabethan worthies were "universalists" in the matter of education, deeming it as needful to train the body in manly games and athletic pastimes, as the mind in the lore of past ages or the languages and science of the present. From Vienna, then as now the city of the beau monde, of the luxurious refinements of fashion, Philip Sidney travelled into Italy, and gazed upon the splendid palaces or paced the historic Rialto of deathless Venice. He also visited Padua, a favourite resort of the wise and learned. Quitting Italy in the summer of 1574 he crossed Germany into Poland *—whose throne was then vacantand even ventured as far as Hungary, the romantic land of the chivalrous Magyars. He spent his winter at Vienna, with his beloved friend Languet, and in the May of 1575 returned to England, having studied the manners and made acquaintance with the characteristics of many nations. He had acquired a knowledge of French, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish, and something he knew of the more profound and difficult German; but, specially, he had learned to read the hearts and decipher the motives of men, and had formed so complete an understanding of the polity and laws of the principal European countries as could not but fit him to enter upon a consideration of the government and political economy of his own with sagacity and judgment. Travel was, emphatically, the finishing part of an Elizabethan gentleman's education. Books he might study at college; men he could only study by mingling among them. In those days of action and stirring adventure, when the great prizes of the State were open to * It is said that he shared in a campaign of the Poles against the Muscovites, but the assertion rests on the most unsubstantial evidence. VALUE OF TRAVEL. 23 every strong hand prompted by a quick and ingenious brain, a knowledge of mankind, under various aspects. and in different conditions, was of the highest value to every English youth. Especially so, because the growing power and expanding commerce of England were rapidly lifting her to a prominent place among the European nations; and it may justly be said that all her sons intimately identified themselves with her progress, and sought by the finest culture of their minds to fit themselves to render her honest and effectual service. How highly Sidney estimated travel may be understood from the letter which, at a somewhat later period, he addressed to his brother Robert : "I am sure," he says, "you have imprinted in your mind the scope and mark you mean by your pains to shoot at; for if you should travel but to travel, or say you had travelled, certainly you should prove a pilgrim to no purpose. But I presume so well of you, that though a great number of us never thought in ourselves why we went, but a certain tickling humour to do as other men had done, you purpose, being a gentleman. born, to furnish yourself with the knowledge of such things as may be serviceable for your country and calling; which certainly stands not in the change of air, for the warmest air makes not a wise man; no, nor in learning languages, although they be of serviceable use, for words are but words in what language soever they be ; and much less in that all of us come home full of disguisements, not only of apparel, but of our countenances, as though the credit of a traveller stood all upon his outside; but in the right informing your mind with those |