I have been reading those charming reminiscences of George Borrow which appeared in _The Athenæum_. {25} I have been reading them, I may add, under the happiest conditions for enjoying them—amid the self-same heather and bracken where I have so often listened to Lavengro’s quaint talk of all the wondrous things he saw and heard in his wondrous life. So graphically has Mr. Hake depicted him, that as I walked and read his paper I seemed to hear the fine East-Anglian accent of the well-remembered voice—I seemed to see the mighty figure, strengthened by the years rather than stricken by them, striding along between the whin bushes or through the quags, now stooping over the water to pluck the wild mint he loved, whose lilac-coloured blossoms perfumed the air as he crushed them, now stopping to watch the water-wagtail by the ponds as he descanted upon the powers of that enchanted bird—powers, like many human endowments, more glorious than pleasant, if it is sober truth, as Borrow would gravely tell, that the gipsy lad who knocks a water-wagtail on the head with a stone gains for a bride a “ladye from a far countrie,” and dazzles with his good luck all the other black-eyed young urchins of the dingle. Though my own intimacy with Borrow did not begin till he was considerably advanced in years, and ended on his finally quitting London for Oulton, there were circumstances in our intercourse—circumstances, I mean, connected partly with temperament and partly with mutual experience—which make me doubt whether any one understood him better than I did, or broke more thoroughly through that exclusiveness of temper which isolated him from all but a few. However, be this as it may, no one at least realized more fully than I how lovable was his nature, with all his angularities—how simple and courageous, how manly and noble. His shyness, his apparent coldness, his crotchety obstinacy, repelled people, and consequently those who at any time during his life really understood him must have been very few. How was it, then, that such a man wandered about over Europe and fraternized so completely with a race so suspicious and intractable as the gipsies? A natural enough question, which I have often been asked, and this is my reply:—