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Now, for most of the 18th century, the education of a wealthy young European wasn't complete until he had taken the grand tour, an extended

journey, sometimes lasting years through France, Italy and Switzerland. And the aim, as Tom touched on,

was to absorb classical civilization at its source, so the ruins of Rome, the galleries of

Florence, the Salons of Paris. And it was the cultural finishing school, essentially, of the European elite.

And it produced a shared cultural language.

To be cultured was to know Italy.

To be cultured was to have walked the forum.

And then came 1789.

And the world changed, as we've touched on this show before.

So on the 14th of July, 1790, a 20-year-old

Cambridge student named William Wordsworth landed in France on the first anniversary of the

storming of the Bastille, the symbolic beginning of the French Revolution. Wordsworth

wasn't a particularly political young man at this point, but the timing felt electric.

France was throwing off centuries of monarchy and aristocratic privilege,

and Wordsworth felt himself walking through what he later called the blissful dawn of a new world.

Yeah, the start of the French Revolution is very exciting.

And everyone's like, this is amazing. This is going to be great and very fast.

It turns into an utter nightmare.

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