erners from the Southern literature would
be left behind? Erunt vitia donec homines.--Always yours,

ELEUTHEROS.

Yet another acquaintance of these Spanish days was Baron Taylor--Isidore
Justin Severin Taylor, to give him his full name--who had a career of
wandering achievement, with Government pay, that must have appealed to
Borrow. Although his father was an Englishman he became a naturalised
Frenchman, and he was for a time in the service of the French Government
as Director of the Theatre Francais, when he had no little share in the
production of the dramas of Victor Hugo and Dumas. Later he was
instrumental in bringing the Luxor obelisk from Egypt to Paris. He wrote
books upon his travels in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.[133] He wandered
all over Europe in search of art treasures for the French Government,
and may very well have met Borrow again and again. Borrow tells us that
he had met Taylor in France, in Russia, and in Ireland, before he met
him in Andalusia, collecting pictures for the French Government.
Borrow's description of their meetings is inimitable:--

Whenever he descries me, whether in the street or the desert,
the brilliant hall or amongst Bedouin _haimas_, at Novogorod or
Stambul, he flings up his arms and exclaims, "_O ciel_! I have
again the felicity of seeing my cherished and most respectable
Borrow."[134]

[Illustration: A LETTER FROM SIR GEORGE VILLIERS, AFTERWARDS EARL OF
CLARENDON, BRITISH MINISTER TO SPAIN, TO GEORGE BORROW]

The last and most distinguished of Borrow's colleagues while in Spain
was George Villiers, fourth Earl of Clarendon, whom we judge to have
been in private life one of the most lovable men of his epoch. George
Villiers was born in London in 1800, and was the grandson of the first
Earl, Thomas Villiers, who received his title when holding office in
Lord North's administration, but is best known from his association in
diplomacy with Frederick the Great. His grandson was born, as it were,
into diplomacy, and at twenty years of age was an _attache_ to the
British Embassy in St. Petersburg. Later he was associated with Sir John
Bowring in negotiating a commercial treaty with France. In August 1833
he was sent as British Minister--'envoy extraordinary' he was called--to
Madrid, and he had been two years in that seething-pot of Spanish
affairs, with Christinos and Carlists at one another's throats, when
Borrow arrived in the P