In July, 1833, Borrow was appointed, with a salary of 200 pounds a year and expenses, to go to St. Petersburg, to help in editing a Manchu translation of the New Testament, or transcribing and collating a translation of the Old, accompanied by a warning against "a tone of confidence in speaking of yourself" in such a phrase as "useful to the Deity, to man, and to yourself." Borrow accepted the correction, and Norwich laughed at him in his new suit. At the end of July he sailed, and as at this time he had no objection to gentility he regretted the end of his passage with so many "genteel, well-bred and intelligent passengers," though he had suffered from sea-sickness, followed by "the horrors." St. Petersburg he thought the finest of the many capitals he had seen. He made the acquaintance of several men who could help him with their learning and their books, and above all he gained the friendship of John P. Hasfeldt, a Dane, a little older than himself, who was interpreter to the Danish Legation and teacher of European languages, evidently a man after Borrow's own heart, with his opinion that "The greater part of those products of art, called 'the learned,' would not be able to earn a living if our Lord were not a guardian of fools." The copying of the Old Testament was finished by the end of the year, without having prevented Borrow from profiting by his unusual facilities for the acquisition of languages. He had then to superintend, or as it fell out, to help largely with his own hands, the printing of the first Manchu translation of the New Testament, with type which had first to be cleansed of ten years' rust and with compositors who knew nothing of Manchu. Lacking almost in time to eat or to sleep he impressed the Bible Society by his prodigious labours under "the blessing of a kind and gracious Providence watching over the execution of a work in which the wide extension of the Saviour's glory is involved."