hysical
strength, quick, penetrating eye, a confident manner, and a disagreeable
tone and pronunciation.' We gather from the same lady that it was Joseph
John Gurney who recommended George Borrow to the Committee of the Bible
Society. 'So he stalked up to London, and they gave him a hymn to
translate into the Manchow language, and the same to one of their people
to translate also. When compared they proved to be very different. When
put before their reader, he had the candour to say that Borrow's was much
the better of the two. On this they sent him to Petersburg to get it
printed, and then gave him business in Portugal.'

One thing is clear--that Borrow was a lonely man, and evidently one who
did not hold the resources of civilization in such esteem as Mr.
Gladstone does. He loved Nature and her ways, and people like the
gipsies, who are supposed to be of a similar way of thinking. He
eschewed the hum of cities and the roar of the 'madding crowd.' He was
big in body and in mind, and wanted elbow-room; and yet what would he
have been if he had not lived in a city, and come under the stimulative
influence of such men as Edward Taylor, of Norwich? It is idle to
complain of cities, however they sully the air, and deface the land, and
pollute the water, and rear the weak and vicious and the wicked--to
remind us how low and depraved human nature can become when it is cut off
from communion with Nature and Nature's God. Borrow owed much to cities,
and was best appreciated by the men who dwelt in them. There is often a
good deal of affectation about the love of rural solitude, nor does it
often last long when there is a wife to have a voice in the matter. Yet
in Borrow undoubtedly the feeling was sincere, and of him Wordsworth
might have written--

'As in the eye of Nature he has lived,
So in the eye of Nature let him die.'

Lowestoft was a frequent attraction for a youthful ramble--perhaps almost
too far, unless one could manage to get a lift in a little yellow-painted
black-bodied vehicle called a whisky, which was grandfather's property,
and into the shafts of which could be put any spare quadruped, whether
donkey, or mule, or pony, it mattered little, and which afforded a
considerable relief when a trip as far as Lowestoft was determined on.
At that time there was no harbour, and the town consisted simply of one
High Street, gradually rising towards the north, with a fine space for
boys to play in be