More fascinating still, perhaps, are the word- master's conversations with Jasper; most wonderful of all, in the opinion of many, is his logomachy with Ursula under the thorn bush.

We shall not readily forget Jasper's complaints that all the 'old-fashioned, good-tempered constables' are going to be set aside, or his gloomy anticipations of the iron roads in which people are to 'thunder along in vehicles pushed forward by fire and smoke.' As for his comparison of the gypsies to cuckoos, the roguish charring fellows, for whom every one has a bad word, yet whom every one is glad to greet once again when the spring comes round, or Ursula's exposition of gypsy love and marriage beneath the hedge,--these are Borrow at his best, as he is most familiar to us, in the open air among gypsies.

With the popish emissary it is otherwise: his portrait is the creation of Borrow's most studied hatred.
Yet it must be admitted that the man in black is a triumph of complex characterisation.

A joyous liver and an unscrupulous libertine, sceptical as Voltaire, as atheistic as a German professor, as practical as a Jew banker, as subtle as a Jesuit, he has as many ways of converting the folks among whom he is thrown as Panurge had of eating the corn in ear.

For the simple and credulous--crosses and beads; for the hard-hearted and venal--material considerations; for the cultured and educated--a fine tissue of epigrams and anthropology; for the ladies--flattery and badinage.