talking incessantly on the top of their tongues, swinging, about their shaggy tails, or necking, with the utmost precision and ease, some stirring and bounding runaway. The milkmaids, with their petticoats carefully gathered down upon and strapped around their ankles, cogs in their hands, and the coronet hassock on their heads, laughing, and walloping, and flaughtering on, making bad worse, and good no better, by premature mirth and illtimed garrulity. So, so! now they are bughted; now the horny heads bristle all along through the wattlings; a sea of goggle, green, meaningless eyes, black faces and erect noses, extends from end to end, from side to side. The milkmaids, with the cogs jammed betwixt their knees, as if they were fixed in a smiddy vice, make a rearward advance upon the prisoners. The milky deluge pours audible and long.

"Tell me not of the hilarity which obtains at routs, balls, plays, or assemblies; give me a brace of stout, ruddyvisaged lads on the outside, and double that allowance of springy, gleesome milkmaids, on the inside of a sheepbught at milking-time, and then we shall talk of real fun and convulsive merriment-of that attack and retort, which are made and returned, in perfect good-nature, yet in all the boisterous seeming of contested victory. This was an amusement in which I took great interest. To pin the maids' petticoats together, from behind, or to invest some of the most remote ewes with thistle or bur heads under the skirt, were everyday tricks. But to accomplish, by means of a plashy descent, rendered still more slippery by being frequently slid upon, the downfall of one of the cog - carriers, as she pursued her way, in unsuspecting glee and careless speed, homewards, was an achievement which not only required address in the execution, but implied some degree of danger in the aftercome.

'Summer, too, was a glorious season for bumbee-binks and wasp nests, and butterfly pursuits. Nor did the carth only afford interest and amusement during this sunny season. I have stretched myself out supine, upon

a green and sloping bank, and continued for hours of mid-day heat, looking at the clouds which floated by, and wondering, from time to time, as I saw them advance rapidly towards the sun, and then gradually melt and disappear, what could have become of them. The chirp of the grasshopper, the buzz of the fly, and the hum of the bee, would not unfrequently lull me into that delightful stupor, amidst which the feelings, borne on the wings of fancy, repair to flowery bowers and Arcadian streams - dwell in viewless intimacy with things unknown, and convert the scattered fragments of half-perceived realities into fairer and more fascinating forms than ever did modern kaleidoscope present to view.

BORROW'S ADVENTURES IN SPAIN.

MR BORROW, the author of a well-known work on the Gipsies of Spain, has also published, under the somewhat quaint title quoted below,* a very remarkable work, abounding in the most vivid and picturesque descriptions of scenery, and sketches of strange and wild adventure. Of his personal history, he tells us little; but the hints and allusions scattered throughout this and the former work, shew that, in various respects, it has been a very strange one-fuller of adventure than anything we are at all familiar with even in modern romance.' It was in the character of an agent for the British and Foreign Bible Society that Mr Borrow visited Spain towards the close of the year 1835. He spent the greater part of five years in this service, partly in superintending the printing of a Spanish Bible at Madrid, partly in personally distributing copies of the sacred Scriptures in the provinces. His work does not assume the form of a regular narrative,

*The Bible in Spain. By George Borrow. 3 vols. Murray: London.

but is rather a series of sketches descriptive of the scenes through which he passed, and of the persons and adventures encountered by him in the course of his missionary enterprises. We purpose giving, as far as the fragmentary character of the work will permit us, a connected view of his efforts to circulate the Bible in the Peninsula, and of the success which has attended his labours.

Mr Borrow landed at Lisbon about the middle of November 1835, and proceeded without delay to take measures for the circulation of the stock of Portuguese Bibles and Testaments which had been placed at his disposal. A part of his stock was put into the hands of the booksellers of Lisbon, and at the same time colporteurs were employed to hawk the books about the streets, receiving a certain profit on every copy they sold. As Mr Borrow's stay in Portugal was limited, he determined, before leaving the country, to establish depôts of Bibles in one or two of the provincial towns. With this view, he set out for Evora, the principal city of the province beyond the Tagus, and one of the most ancient in Portugal, and formerly the seat of a branch of the Inquisition. After a dangerous passage across the Tagus, in which he narrowly escaped drowning, he reached Aldea Gallega about seven o'clock in the evening, shivering with cold, and in a most deplorable plight; and having engaged with a person for mules to carry him to Evora, started next morning in company with the proprietor of the mules and his nephew. When we started, the moon was shining brightly, and the morning was piercingly cold. We soon entered on a sandy hollow way, emerging from which we passed by a strange - looking and large edifice, standing on a high, bleak sand- hill on our left. We were speedily overtaken by five or six men on horseback, riding at a rapid pace, each with a long gun slung at his saddle, the muzzle depending about two feet below the horse's belly. I inquired of the old man what was the reason of this warlike array. He answered, that the roads were very bad-meaning that they abounded with robbers-and that they went armed in this manner

for their defence; they soon turned off to the right towards Palmella. We reached a sandy plain studded with stunted pine; the road was little more than a footpath, and as we proceeded, the trees thickened, and became a wood, which extended for two leagues, with clear spaces at intervals, in which herds of cattle and sheep were feeding; the bells attached to their necks were ringing lowly and monotonously. The sun was just beginning to shew itself; but the morning was misty and dreary, which, together with the aspect of desolation which the country exhibited, had an unfavourable effect on my spirits. I got down and walked, entering into conversation with the old man. He seemed to have but one theme-"the robbers," and the atrocities they were in the habit of practising in the very spots we were passing. The tales he told were truly horrible, and to avoid them, I mounted again, and rode on considerably in front. In about an hour and a half we emerged from the forest, and entered upon a savage, wild, broken ground, covered with mato, or brushwood. The mules stopped to drink at a shallow pool, and on looking to the right, I saw a ruined wall. This, the guide informed me, was the remains of Vendas Velhas, or the Old Inn, formerly the haunt of the celebrated robber Sabocha. I dismounted, and went up to the place, and saw the vestiges of a fire and a broken bottle. The sons of plunder had been there very lately. I left a New Testament and some tracts amongst the ruins, and hastened away.'

The goat-herd of Monte Moro-the night-scene at Evora, where Mr Borrow had taken up his quarters in the midst of a motley company of smugglers of the border-the fugitive, frantic with terror at the idea that he had been pursued by witches, and wearing rosemary in his hat, to elude their malicious search-and the benighted horseman encountered on the return to the metropolis-are sketches worthy of especial notice, and strikingly illustrative of the author's graphic powers. At Evora, he found a bookseller willing to undertake the sale of the Bibles and Testaments, and to him he intrusted one-half of his stock,

the other half he consigned to the secretary to the government at Evora, who, in conjunction with the governor, was endeavouring to establish a school in the vicinity, and who promised to use all his influence to make the knowledge of the Scriptures the basis of the education which the children were to receive. During the time of his sojourn at Evora, Mr Borrow paid a visit every day to a fountain where the muleteers and other people who visit the town are accustomed to water their horses, and entered into conversation with every one who halted at the fountain, upon matters relating to their eternal welfare. None of them, he tells us, had seen the Bible, and not more than half-a-dozen had the slightest inkling of what the holy book contained, but they listened with attention and apparent interest to the statements addressed to them. The belief in witchcraft is very prevalent among the peasantry of Portugal, and many of them wear charms, fabricated and sold by the monks for protection against witches and robbers. Mr Borrow, however, bears emphatic testimony to the decline of the influence of the monks both in Spain and Portugal. Even the smugglers whom he met in the inn at Evora spoke of priestcraft and the monkish system with the utmost abhorrence, and said that they should prefer death to submitting again to the yoke which had formerly galled their necks.

The following description of the manner in which a fidalgo found it necessary to travel on the simple occasion of a household removal, gives a striking picture of the insecurity of the traveller, and of the perils of a wayfaring life in the Peninsula :- Had they been conveying the wealth of Ind through the deserts of Arabia, they could not have travelled with more precaution. The nephew, with drawn sabre, rode in front; pistols in his holsters, and the usual Spanish gun slung at his saddle. Behind him tramped six men in a rank, with muskets shouldered, and each of them wore at his girdle a hatchet, which was probably intended to cleave the thieves to the brisket should they venture to come to close-quarters. There