ment. . . ."

This is a style for information, instruction, edification, and intervals
of sleep. It is the style of an age, a class, a sect, not of an
individual. Deeds and not words are what count in it. Only by big,
wild, or extraordinary things can it be compelled to a semblance of life.
Borrow gives it such things a hundred times, and they help one another to
be effective. The reader does not forget the Gypsies of Granada:

"Many of them reside in caves scooped in the sides of the ravines which
lead to the higher regions of the Alpujarras, on a skirt of which stands
Granada. A common occupation of the Gitanos of Granada is working in
iron, and it is not infrequent to find these caves tenanted by Gypsy
smiths and their families, who ply the hammer and forge in the bowels of
the earth. To one standing at the mouth of the cave, especially at
night, they afford a picturesque spectacle. Gathered round the forge,
their bronzed and naked bodies, illuminated by the flame, appear like
figures of demons; while the cave, with its flinty sides and uneven roof,
blackened by the charcoal vapours which hover about it in festoons, seems
to offer no inadequate representation of fabled purgatory."

The picture of the Gitana of Seville hands on some of its own power to
the quieter pages, and at length, with a score of other achievements of
the same solid kind, kindles well-nigh every part of the shapeless book.
I shall quote it at length:

"If there be one being in the world who, more than another, deserves the
title of sorceress (and where do you find a word of greater romance and
more thrilling interest?), it is the Gypsy female in the prime and vigour
of her age and ripeness of her understanding--the Gipsy wife, the mother
of two or three children. Mention to me a point of devilry with which
that woman is not acquainted. She can at any time, when it suits her,
show herself as expert a jockey as her husband, and he appears to
advantage in no other character, and is only eloquent when descanting on
the merits of some particular animal; but she can do much more; she is a
prophetess, though she believes not in prophecy; she is a physician,
though she will not taste her own philters; she is a procuress, though
she is not to be procured; she is a singer of obscene songs, though she
will suffer no obscene hands to touch her; and though no one is more
tenacious of the little she possesses, she is a cutpurse and a shoplifter
whe