on for soldiers. In that city I and my brother were sent to the
high school. Here the scholars were constantly fighting, though no great
harm was done. I had seen deaths happen through fights at school in
England.

I became a daring cragsman, a character to which an English lad can
seldom aspire, for in England there are neither crags nor mountains. The
Scots are expert climbers, and I was now a Scot in most things,
particularly the language. The castle in which I dwelt stood on a craggy
rock, to scale which was my favourite diversion.

In the autumn of 1815, when the war with Napoleon was ended, we were
ordered to Ireland, where at school I read Latin and Greek with a nice
old clergyman, and of an evening studied French and Italian with a
banished priest, Italian being my favourite.

It was in a horse fair I came across Jasper Petulengro, a young gipsy of
whom I had caught sight in the gipsy camp I have already alluded to. He
was amazed to see me, and in the most effusively friendly way claimed me
as a "pal," calling me Sapengro, or "snake-master," in allusion, he
said, to the viper incident. He said he was also called Pharaoh, and was
the horse-master of the camp.

From this time I had frequent interviews with Jasper. He taught me much
Romany, and introduced me to Tawno Chikno, the biggest man of the gipsy
nation, and to Mrs. Chikno. These stood to him as parents, for his own
were banished. I soon found that in the tents I had become acquainted
with a most interesting people. With their language I was fascinated,
though at first I had taken it for mere gibberish. My rapid progress
astonished and delighted Jasper. "We'll no longer call you Sapengro,
brother," said he, "but Lavengro, which in the language of the gorgios
meaneth word-master." And Jasper's wife actually proposed that I should
marry her sister.

The gipsies departed for England. I was now sixteen, and continued in
the house of my parents, passing my time chiefly in philological
pursuits. But it was high time that I should adopt some profession. My
father would gladly have seen me enter the Church, but feared I was too
erratic. So I was put to the law, but while remaining a novice at that
pursuit, I became a perfect master of the Welsh language. My father soon
began to feel that he had made a mistake in the choice of a profession
for me.

My elder brother, who had cultivated a great taste for painting, told me
one evening that father had given him L1