George Borrow’s books on the Spanish gipsies, their customs, and their curious language had fascinated him, and made him anxious some day to see these strange people for whom he had acquired a singular liking. The Spanish character has in it something strangely akin to the Puritan severity, honesty, and fibre of the English race, and no true Englishman can read the history of the conquests of Peru and Mexico without feeling his heart go forth towards those brave followers of Pizarro and Cortez, who seemed possessed of a character so much like our own in their invincible courage, daring, and hardihood in dealing with difficulties. Elsworth had Puritan blood in him, inherited from his mother, more than one of whose ancestors had fought for England’s liberties under the great Protector. Good blood has the peculiarity of helping its possessor at a critical turn in life; and at this juncture in Elsworth’s history it served to stimulate him with something of the nerve force that enabled his forefathers to cast off the trammels of a licentious and drunken age, and go forth to a purer atmosphere for their souls’ salvation. He knew from many an old book treasured at home, the story of the Pilgrim Fathers, and what they had done for what the world called a mere idea. His favourite book, the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” came to his aid. Was he not, like Christian, setting forth from the City of Destruction? And so one bright autumn day he found himself in the famous city, the Queen of Cities, as Ibn-Batuta calls it. The Arab writers used to say it was a fragment of heaven that had fallen to the earth. Elsworth had not gone forth into a waste, howling wilderness; he did not see there was any use in making himself wretched. He wanted, if possible, to do some good; and as he knew the language of the Gitanos, he thought if he could devote himself to their interests for a while in a missionary way, he would be the happier for being useful in his retirement. For he had great faith in the eternal freshness of the New Testament, and he concluded that its doctrines were as potent, as life-giving now as when they first shed their beams on a benighted world; he was determined that now religious liberty was permitted in Spain he would circulate the Caló New Testament amongst the gipsies, and do what he could to bring them to its teaching.