--_books
which picture her in those antediluvian days when there was such a
thing as space in the island_--_when in England there was a sense of
distance_, _that sense without which there can be no romance_--_when
the stage-coach was in its glory_, _when the only magician that could
convey man and his belongings at any rate of speed beyond man's own
walking rate was the horse_--_the beloved horse whose praises Borrow
loved to sing_, _and whose ideal was reached in the mighty_
'_Shales_'--_when the great high roads were alive_, _not merely with
the bustle of business_, _but with real adventure for the
traveller_--_days and scenes which Borrow_, _better than any one
else_, _could paint_."

THEODORE WATTS.

CHAPTER I: EAST ANGLIA

It is a trite saying, the truth of which is so universally admitted that
it is hardly worth repeating, that a man's memory, above all things,
retains most vividly recollections of the scenes amidst which he passed
his early days. Amidst the loneliness of the African veldt or American
prairie solitudes, the West-countryman dreams of Devon's grassy tors and
honeysuckle lanes, and Cornish headlands, fretted by the foaming waves of
the grey Atlantic; in teaming cities, where the pulse of life beats loud
and strong, the Scotsman ever cherishes sweet, sad thoughts of the braes
and burns about his Highland home; between the close-packed roofs of a
London alley, the Italian immigrant sees the sunny skies and deep blue
seas of his native land, the German pictures to himself the loveliness of
the legend-haunted Rhineland, and the Scandinavian, closing his eyes and
ears to the squalor and misery, wonders whether the sea-birds still
circle above the stone-built cottage in the Nordland cleft, and cry
weirdly from the darkness as they sweep landward in the night. Many a
wanderer, whatever else he may let go, holds in his heart the hope that
one day he may go back to the place where his boyhood's days were spent,
even though it be but to dwell alone amidst the phantoms of long dead
dreams and long lost loves.

East Anglia may well be compared to a sad-faced mother, who sees her
children, whom she would fain keep with her, one by one go out into the
wide world to seek those things that cannot be found in her humble home.
For years the youths of Eastern England have had to leave the hamlet
hall, th