om he had one
daughter, who died before reaching years of womanhood. His wife,
however, had survived her daughter many years, and had been a great
comfort to him, assisting him in his rural occupations; but, about four
years before the present period, he had lost her, since which time he had
lived alone, making himself as comfortable as he could; cultivating his
ground, with the help of a lad from the neighbouring village, attending
to his bees, and occasionally riding his donkey to market, and hearing
the word of God, which he said he was sorry he could not read, twice a
week regularly at the parish church. Such was the old man's tale.

"When he had finished speaking, he led me behind his house, and showed me
his little domain. It consisted of about two acres in admirable
cultivation; a small portion of it formed a kitchen garden, while the
rest was sown with four kinds of grain, wheat, barley, pease, and beans.
The air was full of ambrosial sweets, resembling those proceeding from an
orange grove; a place, which though I had never seen at that time, I
since have. In the garden was the habitation of the bees, a long box,
supported upon three oaken stumps. It was full of small round glass
windows, and appeared to be divided into a great many compartments, much
resembling drawers placed sideways. He told me that, as one compartment
was filled, the bees left it for another; so that, whenever he wanted
honey, he could procure some without injuring the insects. Through the
little round windows I could see several of the bees at work; hundreds
were going in and out of the doors; hundreds were buzzing about on the
flowers, the woodbines, and beans. As I looked around on the
well-cultivated field, the garden, and the bees, I thought I had never
before seen so rural and peaceful a scene."

It may be said of this that it is the style of the time, modified
inexplicably at almost every point by the writer's character. The Bible
and the older-fashioned narrative English of Defoe and Smollett have
obviously lent it some phrases, and also a nakedness and directness that
is half disdainful of the emotions and colours which it cannot hide.
Still further to qualify the Victorianism which he was heir to, Borrow
took over something from the insinuating Sterne. Mr. Thomas Seccombe
{250} has noticed Sterne particularly in Borrow's picture of his father,
one of the most deliberate and artificial portions of the book:

"The ironic