66

Now, he

Hindhead; he swears that he will not go supplied with joint stools?" over it; and he tells us very amusingly sighs, there is a "parlor! ay, and a how, in spite of himself, he found himself carpet and bell-pull, too! and a mahogany on the very "tip top" of it, in a pelting table, and the fine chairs, and the fine rain, owing to an incompetent guide. glass, and all as barefaced upstart as any But he loves the woodlands, and the stock-jobber in the kingdom can boast downs, and bursts into vivid enthusiasm of!" Probably the farmhouse has folat fine points of view. He is specially lowed the furniture, and, meanwhile, what ecstatic in White's country. "On we has become of the fine old British hospitrotted," he says, up this pretty green tality when the farmer and his lads and lane, and, indeed, we had been coming lasses dined at one table, and a solid Engently and gradually up-hill for a good glishman did not squeeze money out of while. The lane was between high banks, his men's wages to surround himself with and pretty high stuff growing on the trumpery finery? banks, so that we could see no distance To say the truth, Cobbett's fine flow of from us, and could receive not the small- invective is a little too exuberant, and est hint of what was so near at hand. overlays too deeply the picturesque touchThe lane had a little turn towards the es of scenery and the occasional bits of end, so that we came, all in a moment, at autobiography which recall his boyish exthe very edge of the hanger; and never perience of the old country life. It would in my life was I so surprised and de- be idle to inquire how far his vision of lighted! I pulled up my horse, and sat the old English country had any foundaand looked. It was like looking from the tion in fact. Our hills and fields may be top of a castle down into the sea, except as lovely as ever; and there is still ample that the valley was land and not water. I room for the lovers of "nature" in Scotch looked at my servant to see what effect moors and lochs, or even amongst the this unexpected sight had upon him. His English fells, or among the storm beaten surprise was as great as mine, though he cliffs of Devon and Cornwall. But nahad been bred amongst the north Hamp- ture, as I have said, is not the country. shire hills. Those who have so strenu- We are not in search of the scenery which ously dwelt on the dirt and dangers of appears now as it appeared in the remote this road have said not a word about the days when painted savages managed to beauties, the matchless beauties, of the raise a granite block upon its supports scenery. And Cobbett goes on to de- for the amusement of future antiquarians. scribe the charms of the view over Sel- We want the country which bears the imborne, and to fancy what it will be "when press of some characteristic social growth; trees, and hangers, and hedges are in leaf, which has been moulded by its inhabitthe corn waving, the meadows bright, and ants as the inhabitants by it, till one is as the hops upon the poles," in language much adapted to the other as the lichen to which is not after the modern style of the rock on which it grows. How bleak word-painting, but excites a contagious and comfortless a really natural country enthusiasm by its freshness and sincerity. may be is apparent to the readers of He is equally enthusiastic soon afterwards Thoreau. He had all the will to become at the sight of Avington Park and a lake a part of nature, and to shake himself swarming with wild fowl; and complains free from the various trammels of civilof the folly of modern rapid travelling. ized life, and he had no small share of "In any sort of carriage you cannot get the necessary qualifications; but one caninto the real country places. To travel in not read his account of his life by Walden stage-coaches is to be hurried along by Pond without a shivering sense of disforce in a box with an air-hole in it, and comfort. He is not really acclimatized; constantly exposed to broken limbs, the so far from being a true child of nature, danger being much greater than that of he is a man of theories, a product of the shipboard, and the noise much more dis- social state against which he tries to agreeable, while the company is frequently revolt. He does not so much relish the not a great deal more to one's liking." wilderness as go out into the wilderWhat would Cobbett have said to a rail-ness in order to rebuke his contempoway? And what has become of the old raries. There is something harsh about farmhouse on the banks of the Mole, once the home of "plain manners and plentiful living," with "oak clothes - chests, oak bedsteads, oak chests of drawers, and oak tables to eat on, long, strong, and well

him and his surroundings, and he affords an unconscious proof that something more is necessary for the civilized man who would become a true man of the woods than simply to strip off his clothes.

He has got tolerably free from tailors; selves blended with the characteristics of but he still lives in the intellectual atmo- the average Englishman. The result is sphere of Cambridge debating-rooms. a strange and yet, in a way, harmonious To find a life really in harmony with a and original type, which made "The Bible rustic environment, we must not go to in Spain a puzzle to the average reader. raw settlements where man is still fight- The name suggested a work of the edify. ing with the outside world, but to some ing class. Here was a good respectable region where a reconciliation has been emissary of the Bible Society going to worked out by an experience of centuries. convert four Papists by a distribution of And amidst all the restlessness of mod- the Scriptures. He has returned to write ern improvers we may still find a few a long tract setting forth the difficulties of regions where the old genius has not been his enterprise, and the stiff-neckedness of quite exorcised. Here and there, in coun- the Spanish people. The luckless readtry lanes, and on the edge of unenclosed er who took up the book on that undercommons, we may still meet the gipsy standing was destined to a strange the type of a race adapted to live in the disappointment. True, Mr. Borrow apinterstices of civilization, having some- peared to take his enterprise quite serithing of the indefinable grace of all wild ously, indulges in the proper reflections, animals, and yet free from the absolute and gets into the regulation difficulty savagery of the genuine wilderness. To involving an appeal to the British minismention gipsies is to think of Mr. Bor- ter. But it soon appears that his Protrow; and I always wonder that the author estant zeal is somehow mixed up with a of "The Bible in Spain" and "Laven- passion for strange wanderings in the gro" is not more popular. Certainly, I queerest of company. To him Spain is have found no more delightful guide to not the land of staunch Catholicism, or the charming nooks and corners of rural of Cervantes, or of Velasquez, and still England. I would give a good deal to less a country of historic or political interidentify that remarkable dingle in which est. Its attraction is in the picturesque he met so singular a collection of char- outcasts who find ample roaming-ground acters. Does it really exist, I wonder, in its wilder regions. He regards them, anywhere on this island? or did it ever it is true, as occasional subjects for a exist? and, if so, has it become a rail- little proselytism. He tells us how he way-station, and what has become of Iso- once delivered a moving address to the pel Berners and "Blazing Bosville, the gipsies in their own language to his most flaming Tinman"? His very name is as promising congregation. When he had good as a poem, and the battle in which finished, he looked up and found himself Mr. Borrow floored the Tinman by that the centre of all eyes, each pair contorted happy left-handed blow, is, to my mind, by a hideous squint, rivalling each other more delightful than the fight in "Tom in frightfulness; and the performance, Brown," or that in which Dobbin acted which he seems to have thoroughly appreas the champion of Osborne. Mr. Bor-ciated, pretty well expressed the gipsy row is a "humorist" of the first water. view of his missionary enterprise. But He lives in a world of his own - a queer they delighted to welcome him in his world with laws peculiar to itself, and other character as one of themselves, and yet one which has all manner of odd and yet as dropping amongst them from the unexpected points of contact with the hostile world outside. And, certainly, no prosaic world of daily experience. Mr. one not thoroughly at home with gipsy Borrow's Bohemianism is no revolt ways, gipsy modes of thought, to whom it against the established order. He does comes quite naturally to put up in a den not invoke nature or fly to the hedges of cutthroats, or to enter the field of his because society is corrupt or the world missionary enterprise in company with a unsatisfying, or because he has some professional brigand travelling on busikind of new patent theory of life to work ness, could have given us so singular a glimpse of the most picturesque elements of a strange country. Your respectable compiler of handbooks might travel for years in the same districts all unconscious that passing vagabonds were so fertile in romance. The freemasonry which exists amongst the class lying outside the pale of respectability enables Mr. Borrow to fall in with adventures full of mysterious

out.

He cares nothing for such fancies. On the contrary, he is a staunch conservative, full of good old-fashioned prejudices. He seems to be a case of the strange reappearance of an ancestral instinct under altered circumstances. Some of his forefathers must have been gipsies by temperament if not by race; and the impulses due to that strain have got them

not asking questions, or following out delicate inquiries; and these singular figures are the more attractive because they come and go, half revealing themselves for a moment, and then vanishing into outside mystery; as the narrator himself sometimes merges into the regions of absolute commonplace, and then dives down below the surface into the remotest recesses of the social labyrinth.

In Spain there may be room for such wild adventures. In the trim, orderly English country we might fancy they had gone out with the fairies. And yet Mr. Borrow meets a decayed pedlar in Spain who seems to echo his own sentiments; and tells him that even the most prosperous of his tribe who have made their fortunes in America, return in their dreams to the green English lanes and farmyards. "There they are with their boxes on the ground displaying their goods to the honest rustics and their dames and their daughters, and selling away and chaffering and laughing just as of old. And there they are again at nightfall in the hedge alehouses, eating their toasted cheese and their bread, and drinking the Suffolk ale, and listening to the roaring song and merry jests of the laborers." It is the old picturesque country life which fascinates Mr. Borrow, and he was fortunate enough to plunge into the heart of it before it had been frightened away by the railways.

fascination. He passes through forests | course of his search for the hidden treasat night and his horse suddenly stops and ure at Compostella. Men who live in trembles, whilst he hears heavy footsteps strange company learn the advantage of and rustling branches, and some heavy body is apparently dragged across the road by panting but invisible bearers. He enters a shadowy pass, and is met by a man with a face streaming with blood, who implores him not to go forwards into the hands of a band of robbers; and Mr. Borrow is too sleepy and indifferent to stop, and jogs on in safety without meeting the knife which he half expected. "It was not so written," he says, with the genuine fatalism of your hand-to-mouth Bohemian. He crosses a wild moor with a half-witted guide, who suddenly deserts him at a little tavern. After a wild gallop on a pony, apparently half-witted also, he at last rejoins the guide resting by a fountain. This gentleman condescends to explain that he is in the habit of bolting after a couple of glasses, and never stops till he comes to running water. The congenial pair lose themselves at nightfall, and the guide observes that if they should meet the estadea, which are spirits of the dead riding with candles in their hands a phenomenon happily rare in this region he shall run and run till he drowns himself in the sea, somewhere near Muros." The estadia do not appear, but Mr. Borrow and his guide come near being hanged as Don Carlos and a nephew, escaping only by the help of a sailor who knows the English words knife and fork, and can therefore testify to Mr. Borrow's nationality; and is finally liberated by an official who is a devoted student of Jeremy Bentham. The queer stumbling upon a name redolent of every-day British life, throws the surrounding oddity into quaint relief. But Mr. Borrow encounters more mysterious characters. There is the wondrous Abarbenelt, whom he meets riding by night, and with whom he soon becomes hand and glove. Abarbenelt is a huge figure in a broad-brimmed hat, who stares at him in the moonlight with deep, calm eyes, and still revisits him in dreams. He has two wives and a hidden treasure of old coins, and when the gates of his house are locked, and the big dogs loose in the court, he dines off ancient plate made before the discovery of America. There are many of his race amongst the priesthood, and even an archbishop, who died in great renown for sanctity, had come by night to kiss his father's hand. Nor can any reader forget the singular history of Benedict Mol, the wandering Swiss, who turns up now and then in the

or

Lavengro" is a strange medley, which is nevertheless charming by reason of the odd idiosyncrasy which fits the author to interpret this fast-vanishing phase of life. It contains queer controversial irrelevance conversations stories which may or may not be more or less founded on fact, tending to illustrate the pernicious propagandism of Popery, the evil done by Sir Walter Scott's novels, and the melancholy results of the decline of pugilism. And then we have satire of a simple kind upon literary craftsmen, and excursions into philology which show at least an amusing dash of innocent vanity. the oddity of these quaint utterances of a humorist who seeks to find the most congenial mental food in the Bible, the Newgate Calendar, and in old Welsh literature, is in thorough keeping with the situation. He is the genuine tramp whose experience is naturally made up of miscellaneous waifs and strays; who

But

แ

drifts into contact with the most eccen- | with him, and hears that Mrs. Herne has
tric beings, and parts company with hanged herself, and celebrates the meet-
them at a moment's notice, or catching ing by a fight without gloves, but in pure
hold of some stray bit of out-of-the-way friendliness, and then settles down to
knowledge follows it up as long as it the life of a blacksmith in his secluded
amuses him. He is equally at home dingle.
compounding narratives of the lives of Certainly it is a queer, topsy-turvy world
eminent criminals for London booksel- to which we are introduced in "Laven-
lers, or making acquaintance with thim gro." It gives the reader the sensation
bleriggers, or pugilists, or Armenian mer- of a strange dream in which all the mis-
chants, or becoming a hermit in his cellaneous population of caravans and
remote dingle, making his own shoes wayside tents make their exits and en-
and discussing theology with a postboy, trances at random, mixed with such eccen-
a feminine tramp, and a Jesuit in dis- trics as the distinguished author, who has
guise. The compound is too quaint for a mysterious propensity for touching odd
fiction, but is made interesting by the objects as a charm against evil. All one's
quaint vein of simplicity and the touch of ideas are dislocated when the centre of
genius which brings out the picturesque interest is no longer in the thick of the
side of his roving existence, and yet crowd, but in that curious limbo whither
leaves one in doubt how far the author drift all the odd personages who live in
appreciates his own singularity. One old the interstices without being caught by
gipsy lady in particular, who turns up at the meshes of the great network of ordi-
intervals, is as fascinating as Meg Merri-nary convention. Perhaps the oddity
lies, and at once made lifelike and more
mysterious. My came is Herne, and I
comes of the hairy ones!" are the remark-
able words by which she introduces her-
self. She bitterly regrets the intrusion
of a Gentile into the secrets of the Ro-
manies, and relieves her feelings by
administering poison to the intruder, and
then trying to poke out his eye as he is
lying apparently in his last agonies.
But she seems to be highly respected by
her victim as well as by her own peo-
ple, and to be acting in accordance with
the moral teaching of her tribe. Her de-
sign is frustrated by the appearance of a
Welsh Methodist preacher, who, like
every other strange being, is at once com-
pelled to unbosom himself to this odd
confessor. He fancies himself to have
committed the unpardonable sin at the
age of six, and is at once comforted by
Mr. Borrow's sensible observation that
he should not care if he had done the
same thing twenty times over at the same
period. The grateful preacher induces
his consoler to accompany him to the bor-
ders of Wales; but there Mr. Borrow
suddenly stops on the ground that he
should prefer to enter Wales in a suit of
superfine black, mounted on a powerful
steed like that which bore Greduv to the
fight of Catrath, and to be welcomed at a
dinner of the bards, as the translator of
the odes of the great Ab Gwilym. And
Mr. Petulengro opportunely turns up at
the instant, and Mr. Borrow rides back

repels many readers; but to me it always
seems that Mr. Borrow's dingle repre-
sents a little oasis of genuine romance
a kind of half-visionary fragment of fairy-
land, which reveals itself like the en-
chanted castle in the Vale of St. John, and
then vanishes after tantalizing and arous-
ing one's curiosity. It will never be again
discovered by any flesh-and-blood_trav-
eller; but in my imaginary travels, I like
to rusticate there for a time, and to feel
as if the gipsy was the true possessor of
the secret of life, and we who travel by
rail and read newspapers and consider
ourselves to be sensible men of business,
were but vexatious intruders upon this
sweet dream. There must, one supposes,
be a history of England from the Petu-
lengro point of view, in which the change
of dynasties recognized by Hume and Mr.
Freeman, or the oscillations of power be-
tween Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Glad-
stone, appear in relative insignificance as
more or less affecting certain police regu-
lations and the enclosure of commons. It
is pleasant for a time to feel as though
the little rivulet were the main stream,
and the social outcast the true centre of
society. The pure flavor of the country
life is only perceptible when one has an-
nihilated all disturbing influences; and in
that little dingle with its solitary forge
beneath the woods haunted by the hairy
Hernes, that desirable result may be
achieved for a time, even in a London
library.