"I was standing on the castle hill in the midst of a fair of horses. I have already had occasion to mention this castle. It is the remains of what was once a Norman stronghold, and is perched upon a round mound or monicle, in the midst of the old city. Steep is this mound and scarped, evidently by the hand of man; a deep gorge, over which is flung a bridge, separates it, on the south, from a broad swell of open ground called "the hill"; of old the scene of many a tournament and feat of Norman chivalry, but now much used as a show place for cattle, where those who buy and sell beeves and other beasts resort at stated periods." Perhaps Borrow inherited from his father--the conqueror of Big Ben Brain, "whose skin was brown and dusky as that of a toad"--the love of fisticuffs which was so prominently marked in his career. It was this which led him to become the pupil in boxing of "the terrible Thurtell," executed for the murder of Weare, January 9th, 1824 (his father, Thomas Thurtell, was Sheriff of Norwich in 1815, Mayor in 1828, and died April 8th, 1846, at the good old age of eighty-one. He lived at Harford Hall Farm, Lakenham, a largish house standing back from the highway, towards the end of the Ipswich Road, on the left-hand side going from Norwich, some little distance this side of Harford Bridges in the river valley below). The celebrated chapter on "The Bruisers of England" ("Lavengro," Chap. XXVI.) has been warmly applauded by many writers as a very fine example of Borrow's style. That it undoubtedly is, but some critics were unsympathetic about pugilism, amongst them the late Rev. Whitwell Elwin, who, in the _Quarterly Review_ (January-April, 1857), wrote: "Mr. Borrow's notions of what constitutes cant have not always been the same. In his 'Gypsies of Spain' he speaks of pugilistic combats as 'disgraceful and brutalizing exhibitions,' but in the Appendix to 'The Romany Rye' we find that he now considers such language to be cant. This is one of the cases in which second thoughts are worst." Another reviewer deprecates Borrow's glorifying attitude towards "the very worst amongst the bad, such as David Haggart and John Thurtell; and not content with turning away the edge of an instinctive condemnation of crime, actually entitles the prize-fighters, the brutality of whose profession can scarcely be exaggerated, 'the priests of an old religion.'" More recently, while advocating the Children's Bill in the House of Commons (March 24th, 1908), Mr. Shaw said that "George Borrow never did a worse service to humanity than by writing 'Lavengro,' with its glorification of vagabond life." Though one cannot acquit Borrow of inconsistency, we must remember that "The Gypsies of Spain" was written in 1840, and that he sent a notice of it to Mr. Brandram of the Bible Society in March of that year, ending his letter with the words: "I hope yet to die in the cause