often in such odd company, that many think it much better spared."[388] But the feature of travel which was most mercilessly analysed by Locke was the Governor.  He exposed the futility of sending a boy abroad to gain experience and to mingle with good society while he was so young as to need a guardian.  For at the age when most boys were abroad—­that is, from sixteen to twenty-two—­they thought themselves too much men to be governed by others, and yet had not experience and prudence enough to govern themselves.  Under the shelter of a Governor they were excused from being accountable for their own conduct and very seldom troubled themselves with inquiries or with making useful observations of their own.

While the Governor robbed his pupil of life’s responsibilities on one hand, he hampered him, on the other, in any efforts to get into good company: 

“I ask amongst our young men that go abroad under tutors what one is there of an hundred, that ever visits any person of quality? much less makes an acquaintance with such from whose conversation he may learn what is good breeding in that country and what is worth observation in it....  Nor indeed is it to be wondered.  For men of worth and parts will not easily admit the familiarity of boys who yet need the care of a tutor:  though a young gentleman and stranger, appearing like a man, and shewing a desire to inform himself in the customs, laws, and government of the country he is in, will find welcome, assistance and entertainment everywhere."[389]

These, and many comments of the same sort from other observers, made for the disintegration of the Grand Tour, and cast discredit upon it as a mode of education.  Locke was not the only person who exposed the ineffectiveness of governors.  They became a favourite subject of satire in the eighteenth century.  Though even the best sort of “maitre d’ours” or “bear-master,” as the French called him, robbed travel of its proper effect, the best were seldom available for the hosts of boyish travellers.  Generally the family chaplain was chosen, because of his cheapness, and this unfortunate was expected to restrain the boisterous devilment of the Peregrine Pickle committed to his care.[390] A booklet called The Bear-Leaders; or, Modern Travelling Stated in a Proper Light, sums up a biting condemnation of “our rugged unsocial Telemachuses and their unpolished Mentors,” describing how someone in orders, perhaps a family dependent, is chosen as the Governor of the crude unprepared mortal embarking for a tour of Europe.  “The Oddities, when introduced to each other, start back with mutual Astonishment, but after some time from a frequency of seeing, grow into a Coarse Fondness one for the other, expressed by Horse Laughs, or intimated by alternate Thumps on the Back, with all such other gentle insinuations of our uncivilized Male Hoydens."[391]