continued to widen and deepen, until, at length, when fame and fortune
were his, it led him to take extended journeys into Hungary, Wallachia,
and other European countries for the purpose of searching out the
descendants of the original wanderers from the East and learning from
them their language, customs and history.

Borrow himself says that he could remember no time when the mere mention
of the name of gipsy did not awaken within him feelings hard to be
described. He could not account for it, but some of the Romanies, he
remarks, "to whom I have stated this circumstance have accounted for it
on the supposition that the soul which at present animates my body has at
some former period tenanted that of one of their people, for many among
them are believers in metempsychosis and, like the followers of Bouddha,
imagine that their souls by passing through an infinite number of bodies,
attain at length sufficient purity to be admitted to a state of perfect
rest and quietude, which is the only idea of heaven they can form."

The Norwich Castle Hill provided Borrow with many opportunities of
observing the habits of the East Anglian Romanies, who, in his day,
attended in considerable numbers the horse sales and fairs that were held
in the old city. Thither would come the Smiths or Petulengros, Bosviles,
Grays and Pinfolds; and often, when they left the Hill, he would
accompany them to their camps on Mousehold Heath and to neighbouring
fairs and markets. Their daring horsemanship fascinated him, while the
strange tongue they employed amongst themselves when bargaining with the
farmers and dealers, aroused in him a curiosity that could only be
satisfied by a closer acquaintance with its form and meaning. Many of
the _chals_ and _chis_ to be met with in "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye"
were transferred to the pages of those works from the East Anglian heaths
and fairsteads. It was on a heath not far from his Suffolk home that he
introduced the Jew of Fez to Jasper Petulengro in order that he might
refute the theory entertained by one of his critics that the Romanies
were nothing less than the descendants of the two lost tribes of Israel.

The village of Oulton, too, gave him many chances of intercourse with the
gipsies. Within five minutes' walk of his home there is a spot where
they frequently assembled, and where a few of them may sometimes be seen
even at the present day. The writer has reason to know that the gipsies