written. They were missives from the lonely watch-tower of the writer's soul, sent out into the strange and busy battle of the world—sent out to find, if possible, another soul or two to whom the watcher was, without knowing it, akin.

And now as to my two Gypsy heroines, the Sinfi Lovell of Aylwin and the Rhona Boswell of The Coming of Love. Although Borrow belonged to a different generation from mine, I enjoyed his intimate friendship in his later years—during the time when he lived in Hereford Square; and since his death I have written a good deal about him—both in prose and in verse—in the Athenæum, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and in other places. When, some seven or eight years ago, I brought out an edition of Lavengro (in Messrs. Ward, Lock & Co.'s Minerva Library), I prefaced that delightful book by a few desultory remarks upon Sorrow's Gypsy characters. On that occasion I gave a slight sketch of the most remarkable 'Romany Chi' that had ever been met with in the part of East Anglia known to Borrow and myself—Sinfi Lovell. I described her playing on the crwth. I discussed her exploits as a boxer, and I contrasted her in many ways with the glorious Anglo-Saxon road-girl Isopel Berners. Since the publication of Aylwin and The Coming of Love I have received very many letters from English and American readers inquiring whether 'the Gypsy girl described in the introduction to Lavenyro is the same as the Sinfi Lovell of Aylwin,' and also whether 'the Rhona Boswell that figures in the prose story is the same as the Rhona of The Coming of Love?' The evidence of the reality of Rhona so impressed itself upon the reader that on the appearance of Rhona's first letter in the Athenæum, where the poem was printed in fragments, I got among other letters one from the sweet poet and adorable woman Jean Ingelow, who was then very ill,—near her death indeed,—urging me to tell her whether Rhona's love-letter was not a versification of a real letter from a real Gypsy to her lover. As it was obviously impossible for me to answer the queries individually, I take this opportunity of saying that the Sinfi of Aylwin and the Sinfi described in my introduction to Lavengro are one and the same character—except that the story of the child Sinfi's weeping for the 'poor dead Gorgios' in the churchyard, given in the Introduction, is really told by the Gypsies, not of Sinfi, but of Rhona Boswell. Sinfi is the character alluded to in the now famous sonnet describing 'the walking lord of Gypsy lore,' Borrow, by his most intimate friend Dr. Gordon Hake.

    'And he, the walking lord of Gypsy lore!
       How often 'mid the deer that grazed the Park,
     Or in the fields and heath and windy moor,
       Made musical with many a soaring lark,
     Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
       While Lavengro, then towering by your side,
     With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
       Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
     To tell the legends of the fading race—.
       As at the summons of his piercing glance,
     Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
       While you called up that pendant of romance
     To Petulengro with his boxing glory
     Your Amazonian Sinfi's noble story?'

Now that so many of the griengroes (horse-dealers), who form the aristocracy of the Romany race, have left England for America, it is natural enough that to some readers of Aylwin and The Coming of Love my pictures of Romany life seem a little idealised. The Times, in a kindly notice of The Coming of Love, said that the kind of Gypsies there depicted are a very interesting people, 'unless the author has flattered them unduly.' Those who best knew the Gypsy women of that period will be the first to aver that I have not flattered them unduly. But I have fully discussed this matter, and given a somewhat elaborate account of Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, in the introduction to the fifth edition of The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswell's Story.

CONTENTS

CHAP.

1. THE CYMRIC CHILD 2. THE MOONLIGHT CROSS OF THE GNOSTICS 3. WINIFRED'S DUKKERIPEN 4. THE LEADER OF THE AYLWINIANS 5. HAROUN-AL-RASCHID THE PAINTER 6. THE SONG OF Y WYDDFA 7. SINFI'S DUKKERIPEN 8. ISIS AS HUMOURIST 9. THE PALACE OF NIN-KI-GAL 10. BEHIND THE VEIL 11. THE IRONY OF HEAVEN 12. THE REVOLVING CAGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE 13. THE MAGIC OF SNOWDON 14. SINFI'S COUP DE THÉÂTRE 15. THE DAUGHTER OF SNOWDON'S STORY 16. D'ARCY'S LETTER 17. THE TWO DUKKERIPENS 18. THE WALK TO LLANBERIS APPENDICES

AYLWIN

THE RENASCENCE OF WONDER

I

THE CYMRIC CHILD

I

'Those who in childhood have had solitary communings with the sea know the sea's prophecy. They know that there is a deeper sympathy between the sea and the soul of man than other people dream of. They know that the water seems nearer akin than the land to the spiritual world, inasmuch as it is one and indivisible, and has motion, and answers to the mysterious call of the winds, and is the writing tablet of the moon and stars. When a child who, born beside the sea, and beloved by the sea, feels suddenly, as he gazes upon it, a dim sense of pity and warning; when there comes, or seems to come, a shadow across the waves, with never a cloud in the sky to cast it; when there comes a shuddering as of wings that move in dread or ire, then such a child feels as if the bloodhounds of calamity are let loose upon him or upon those he loves; he feels that the sea has told him all it dares tell or can. And, in other moods of fate, when beneath a cloudy sky the myriad dimples of the sea begin to sparkle as though the sun were shining bright upon them, such a child feels, as he gazes at it, that the sea is telling him of some great joy near at hand, or, at least, not far off.'

One lovely summer afternoon a little boy was sitting on the edge of the cliff that skirts the old churchyard of Raxton-on-Sea. He was sitting on the grass close to the brink of the indentation cut by the water into the horse-shoe curve called by the fishermen Mousetrap Cove; sitting there as still as an image of a boy in stone, at the forbidden spot where the wooden fence proclaimed the crumbling hollow crust to be specially dangerous—sitting and looking across the sheer deep gulf below.

Flinty Point on his right was sometimes in purple shadow and sometimes shining in the sun; Needle Point on his left was sometimes in purple shadow and sometimes shining in the sun; and beyond these headlands spread now the wide purple, and now the wide sparkle of the open sea. The very gulls, wheeling as close to him as they dared, seemed to be frightened at the little boy's peril. Straight ahead he was gazing, however—gazing so intently that his eyes must have been seeing very much or else very little of that limitless world of light and coloured shade. On account of certain questions connected with race that will be raised in this narrative, I must dwell a little while upon the child's personal appearance, and especially upon his colour. Natural or acquired, it was one that might be almost called unique; as much like a young Gypsy's colour as was compatible with respectable descent, and yet not a Gypsy's colour. A deep undertone of 'Romany brown' seemed breaking through that peculiar kind of ruddy golden glow which no sunshine can give till it has itself been deepened and coloured and enriched by the responsive kisses of the sea.

Moreover, there