on one side of the fire and his old mother on the other." It
was known to her that "his spirits always sink in wet weather, and to-day
was very rainy, but he was courteous and not displeased to be a little
lionised, for his delicacy is not of the most susceptible." He was "a
tall, ungainly, uncouth man," in her opinion, "with great physical
strength, a quick penetrating eye, a confident manner, and a disagreeable
tone and pronunciation." In no place does he make anyone praise his
voice, and, as he said, it reminded one Spanish woman of a German
clockmaker's.

But Borrow was not happy or at ease. He took a riding tour in the east
of England; he walked, rowed and fished; but that was not enough. He was
restless, and yet did not get away. Evidently he did not conceal the
fact that he thought of travelling again. He had talked about Africa and
China: he was now talking about Constantinople and Africa. He was often
miserable, though he had, so far as he knew, "no particular disorder." If
at such times he was away from Oulton, he thought of his home as his only
refuge in this world; if he was at home he thought of travel or foreign
employment. His disease was, perhaps, now middle age, and too good a
memory in his blood and in his bones. Whatever it was it was apparently
not curable by his kind of Christianity, nor by a visit from the genial
Ford, and a present of caviare and pheasant; nor by the never-out-of-date
reminder from friends that he was very well off, etc. If he had been
caught by Dissenters, as he should have been, he might by this time have
had salvation, and an occupation for life, in founding a new truculent
sect of Borrovians. As the Rev. the Romany Rye he might have blazed in
an entertaining and becoming manner. As "a sincere member of the old-
fashioned Church of England, in which he believes there is more religion,
and consequently less cant, than in any other Church in the world," there
was nothing for him to do but sit down at Oulton and contemplate the
fact. This and the other fact that "he eats his own bread, and is one of
the very few men in England who are independent in every sense of the
word," were afterwards to be made subjects for public rejoicing in the
Appendix to "The Romany Rye."

But in his discontent at the age of forty it cannot have been entirely
satisfactory, however flattering, to hear Ford, in the "Edinburgh,"
saying:

"We wish he would, on some leisure day, draw up th