inion of death, Mr. Petulengro?"

"My opinion of death, brother, is much the same as that in the old
song of Pharaoh . . . when a man dies he is cast into the earth and
his wife and child sorrow over him. If he has neither wife nor child,
then his father and mother, I suppose; and if he is quite alone in the
world, why, then he is cast into the earth and there is an end of the
matter."

"And do you think that is the end of man?"

"There's an end of him, brother, more's the pity."

"Why do you say so?"

"Life is sweet, brother."

"Do you think so?"

"Think so! there's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun,
moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on
the heath. Life is very sweet, brother: who would wish to die?"

"I would wish to die."

"You talk like a gorgio--which is the same as talking like a fool;
were you a Romany chal you would talk wiser. Wish to die, indeed! a
Romany chal would wish to live for ever."

"In sickness, Jasper?"

"There's the sun and stars, brother."

"In blindness, Jasper?"

"There's the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that I
would gladly live for ever. Daeta, we'll now go to the tents and put
on the gloves, and I'll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is
to be alive, brother."

Leaving Norwich and his legal trammels, a few weeks after his father's
death, in 1824, Lavengro reaches London--the scene of Grub Street
struggles not greatly relaxed in severity since the days of Newbery,
Gardener and Christopher Smart. As the genius of Hawthorne was cooped up
and enslaved for the American "Peter Parley," so that of Borrow was hag-
ridden by a bookseller publisher of an even worse type, the radical
alderman and philanthropic sweater, Sir Richard Phillipps. For this
stony-hearted faddist he covered reams of paper with printers' copy; and
we are told that the kind of compilation that he liked (and probably
executed) best was that of _Newgate Lives and Trials_. He had well-nigh
reached the end of his tether when he had the conversation with
Phillipps's head factotum, Taggart, which we cite below and recommend
feelingly to the consideration of every literary aspirant. Sordid and
commonplace enough are the details; simple and free from every kind of
inflation the language in which they are narrated. Yet how picturesque
are these vignettes of London life