shall mount my
horse and ride into Norwich to pay a visit to a few old friends.
Yesterday the son of our excellent Dawson Turner rode over to see me;
they are all well, it seems. Our friend Joseph Gurney, however, seems to
be in a strange way--diabetes, I hear. I frequently meditate upon "The
Life," and am arranging the scenes in my mind. With best remembrances to
Mrs. M. and all your excellent family,

Truly and respectfully yours,

GEORGE BORROW.

Mr. Richard Ford's forthcoming work--"The Handbook for Spain"--about
which Mr. Borrow had been making so many enquiries, was the result of
many years' hard riding and constant investigation throughout Spain, one
of the least known of all European countries at that time. Mr. Ford
called upon Mr. Murray, after "The Bible in Spain" had been published,
and a copy of the work was presented to him. He was about to start on
his journey to Heavitree, near Exeter. A few days after his arrival Mr.
Murray received the following letter from him:

_Mr. Richard Ford to John Murray_.

"I read Borrow with great delight all the way down per rail, and it
shortened the rapid flight of that velocipede. You may depend upon it
that the book will sell, which, after all, is the rub. It is the
antipodes of Lord Carnarvon, and yet how they tally in what they have in
common, and that is much--the people, the scenery of Galicia, and the
suspicions and absurdities of Spanish Jacks-in-office, who yield not in
ignorance or insolence to any kind of red-tapists, hatched in the
hot-beds of jobbery and utilitarian mares-nests ... Borrow spares none
of them. I see he hits right and left, and floors his man wherever he
meets him. I am pleased with his honest sincerity of purpose and his
graphic abrupt style. It is like an old Spanish ballad, leaping in _res
medias_, going from incident to incident, bang, bang, bang, hops, steps,
and jumps like a cracker, and leaving off like one, when you wish he
would give you another touch or _coup de grace_ ... He really sometimes
puts me in mind of Gil Blas; but he has not the sneer of the Frenchman,
nor does he gild the bad. He has a touch of Bunyan, and, like that
enthusiastic tinker, hammers away, _a la Gitano_, whenever he thinks he
can thwack the Devil or his man-of-all-work on earth--the Pope. Therein
he resembles my friend and everybody's friend--_Punch_--who, amidst all
his adventures, never spares the black one. However, I am not going to
review him now; for