d on my
return an edition of the New Testament at Madrid, a copy of which I now
present to you for the first time. This work, executed at the office of
Borrego, the most fashionable printer at Madrid, who had been recommended
to me by Isturitz himself and most particularly by my excellent friend
Mr. O'Shea, is a publication which I conceive no member of the Committee
will consider as calculated to cast discredit on the Bible Society, it
being printed on excellent English paper and well bound, but principally
and above all from the fact of its exhibiting scarcely one typographical
error, every proof having been read thrice by myself and once or more
times by the first scholar in Spain.

I subsequently published the Gospel of Saint Luke in the Rommany and
Biscayan languages. With respect to the first, I beg leave to observe
that no work printed in Spain ever caused so great and so general a
sensation, not so much amongst the Gypsies, that peculiar people, for
whom it was intended, as amongst the Spaniards themselves, who, though
they look upon the Roma with some degree of contempt as a low and
thievish race of outcasts, nevertheless take a strange interest in all
that concerns them, it having been from time immemorial their practice,
more especially of the dissolute young nobility, to cultivate the
acquaintance of the Gitanos as they are popularly called, probably
attracted by the wild wit of the latter and the lascivious dances of the
females. The apparition therefore of the Gospel of Saint Luke at Madrid
in the peculiar jargon of these people was hailed as a strange novelty
and almost as a wonder, and I believe was particularly instrumental in
bruiting the name of the Bible Society far and wide through Spain, and in
creating a feeling far from inimical towards it and its proceedings. I
will here take the liberty to relate an anecdote illustrative of the
estimation in which this little work was held at Madrid. The Committee
are already aware that a seizure was made of many copies of Saint Luke in
the Rommany and Biscayan languages, in the establishment at which they
were exposed for sale, which copies were deposited in the office of the
Civil Governor. Shortly before my departure a royal edict was published,
authorising all the public libraries to provide themselves with copies of
the said works on account of their philological merit; whereupon, on
application being made to the office, it was discovered that the cop