than in the _Confessions_ of Rousseau, that inveterate pedestrian who
walked Europe to the rhythm of ideas as epoch-making as any that have
ever emanated from the mind of man.

"La chose que je regrette le plus" (writes Rousseau) "dans les details
de ma vie dont j'ai perdu la memoire, est de n'avoir pas fait des
journaux de mes voyages. Jamais je n'ai tant pense, tant existe, tant
vecu, tant ete moi, si j'ose ainsi dire, que dans ceux que j'ai faits
seul et a pied. La marche a quelque chose qui anime et avive mes
idees: je ne puis presque penser quand je reste en place; il faut que
mon corps soit en branle pour y mettre mon esprit. La vue de la
campagne, la succession des aspects agreables, le grand air, le grand
appetit, la bonne sante que je gagne en marchant, la liberte du
cabaret, l'eloignement de tout ce qui me fait sentir ma dependance, de
tout ce qui me rappelle a ma situation: tout cela degage mon ame."

It is a possession in a rare degree of this wonderful open-air quality as
a writer that constrains us in our generation to condone any offences
against the mint and anise and cummin decrees of literary infallibility
that Borrow may have from time to time committed. And when it is
realised, in addition, what a unique knowledge he possessed of the daily
life, the traditions, the folk-lore, and the dialects of the strange
races of vagrants, forming such a picturesque element in the life of the
road, the documentary value, as apart from the literary interest of
Borrow's work, becomes more and more manifest.

_Lavengro_ is not a book, it is true, to open sesame to the first comer,
or to yield up one tithe of its charm upon a first acquaintance. Yet, in
spite of the "foaming vipers," as Borrow styles his critics, _Lavengro's_
roots have already struck deep into the soil of English literature, as