When Forster sends his characters to Italy, he invokes a complex tradition of representing English travel to southern Europe. Italy epitomises the 'sacredness of old European beauty and aspiration'. Its monuments and artefacts were a staple component of the Grand Tour, the eighteenth-century tradition of travel to the Continent that functioned as the finishing stage in a young English gentleman's education. As Dr Johnson's comment suggests, a young gentleman 'ritually joined himself to the “Classical Mind” by visiting the sites made famous by the texts he had studied'. As the Continental tour became more accessible to a broader range of English travellers in the nineteenth century, however, the value of this kind of travel could no longer be taken for granted. Rather than offering a chance to commune with the 'Classical Mind', English travel to Italy in the post-Romantic period could actually exacerbate a sense of cultural and historical belatedness. It could expose rather than resolve a sense of emotional and sensual alienation.