He was living cheaply, suffering sometimes from "the horrors," and curing them with port wine--sending money home to his mother, bidding her to employ a maid and to read and "think as much of God as possible." Nor was he doing merely what he was bound to do. For example, he translated some of the "Homilies of the Church of England" into Russian and into Manchu. He also published in St. Petersburg his "Targum" and "Talisman," a short further collection of translations from Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and from Russian national songs. The work was finished and formally and kindly approved by the Bible Society. He had proposed long before that he should distribute the books himself, wandering overland with them by Lake Baikal and Kiakhta right to Pekin; but the Russian Government refused a passport. Dr. Knapp believes that this intention of going among the Tartars and overland from Russia to Pekin was the sole ground for his crediting himself with travels in the Far East. In the flesh he had to content himself with a journey to Novgorod and Moscow. As he had visited the Jews at Hamburg so he did the Gypsies at Moscow. This adventure moved him to his first characteristic piece of prose, in a letter to the Society. This letter, which was afterwards printed in the "Athenaeum," {132} and incorporated in "The Zincali," mentions the Gypsies who have become successful singers and married noblemen, but continues: "It is not, however, to be supposed that all the female Gypsies are of this high, talented and respectable order: amongst them are many low and profligate females, who sing at taverns or at the various gardens in the neighbourhood, and whose husbands and male connexions subsist by horse jobbing and like kinds of traffic. The principal place of resort of this class is Marina Rotche, lying about two versts from Moscow, and thither I drove, attended by a _valet de place_. Upon my arriving there, the Gypsies swarmed out from their tents, and from the little tradeer, or tavern, and surrounded me; standing on the seat of the caleche, I addressed them in a loud voice in the dialect of the English Gypsies, with which I have some slight acquaintance. A scream of wonder instantly arose, and welcomes and greetings were poured forth in torrents of musical Rommany, amongst which, however, the most prominent air was, 'Ah kak mi toute karmama,' 'Oh, how we love you'; for at first they supposed me to be one of their brothers, who they said, were wandering about in Turkey, China, and other parts, and that I had come over the great pawnee, or water, to visit them. . . . I visited this place several times during my sojourn at Moscow, and spoke to them upon their sinful manner of living, upon the advent and suffering of Christ Jesus, and expressed, upon my taking leave of them, a hope that they would be in a short period furnished with the word of eternal life in their own language, which they seemed to value and esteem much higher than the Russian."