It is nevertheless true that, taken as a whole, a marked characteristic of the two volumes is the evenness with which the charms are scattered hither and thither betwixt the four covers. Attractive, therefore, as the Isopel Berners episode unquestionably is, and convenient as it is to the reader to have it detached for him in its unity, its perusal must not be taken for a moment to absolve the lover of good literature from traversing chapter by chapter, canto by canto, the whole of the Borrevian epic. It is outside the dingle that he will have to look for the faithfully described bewilderment of the old applewoman after the loss of her book, and for the compassionate delineation of the old man with the bees and the donkey who gave the young Rye to drink of mead at his cottage, and was unashamed at having shed tears on the road. The most heroic of the pugilistic encounters takes place, it is true, in the thick of the dingle, but it is elsewhere that the reader will have to look for the description of the memorable thrashing inflicted upon the bullying stage-coachman by the "elderly individual" who followed the craft of engraving, and learnt fisticuffs from Sergeant Broughton. In the same neighbourhood he will find the admirable vignette of the old man who could read the inscription on Chinese crockery pots, but could not tell what's o'clock, and the life narratives of the jockey and of the inexpert thimble-rigger, Murtagh, who was imprisoned three years for interrupting the Pope's game at picquet, but finally won his way by card-sharping to the very threshold of the Cardinalate. In the second half of the _Romany Rye_, too, he will find the noble apostrophes to youth, and ale, and England, "the true country for adventures," which he will compare, as examples of Borrovian eloquence, with the stirring description of embattled England in the third chapter of _Lavengro_, or the apostrophe to the Irish cob and the Author's first ride in chapter thirteen.