their
books, although technically meritorious, take a view of life which is in
our judgment against good morals, or in some other way mischievous. If,
then, we in this Mother Church claim our share in the commemoration of
George Borrow, it is because he was, as we think, a true seer and
interpreter; because he opened to us fresh springs of delight in the
natural world; because he aroused new and living interest in the lives of
men of many kindreds and tongues; and because he held up to our own
nation an ideal of conduct which could not but benefit those whom it
attracted.

Let me, as shortly as I can, remind you of some characteristics of that
ideal.

Every reader of the Old Testament is familiar with the two great types
which the early Israelitish civilisation sets before us again and again
in Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Esau and Jacob--the contrast of the
wild and vagabond hunter and the "plain man, dwelling in tents." These
types as they appear in the Bible have in them a characteristically
Semitic element, but they have still more of our common humanity. We
observe the two types among our own children, and it is a contrast that
interests us all. Our affections perhaps go out to the romantic Esau
rather than to his business-like brother; while at the same time we
recognise that the future of civilisation must lie not with the child of
impulse, but with him who can forecast the future and rank something
higher than his momentary whim. It was this fundamental contrast that
was so interesting to Borrow. He studied it in the cities and in the
wildernesses of this and many other lands; and because he studied it he
was not content to accept the easy verdict of civilisation that finds
nothing but profanity in Esau, or the equally easy paradox of a return-to-
nature philosophy, which finds all virtue in the noble savage. Borrow
studied Esau in his wandering life with interested eyes, and won his
confidence and a glimpse of his secret; and he studied Jacob in his
counting house and workshop with no less understanding, if with a less
degree of sympathy; and then he exhibited to his countrymen an ideal
which at the time vexed and disquieted them, because there were elements
in it drawn from both.

Look first at those which he drew from his intercourse with the gipsies.
He was puzzled by the problem of their wonderful persistence. What could
be its cause? Their faults were proverbs. They lived by drawing fool