on the
Continent, building up a valuable collection of books and paintings. He
was three times married, and all these unions seem to have been happy,
in spite of an almost unpleasant celerity in the second alliance, which
took place nine months after the death of his first wife. A very large
portion of his life he devoted to Spain, which he knew so intimately
that in 1845 he produced that remarkable _Handbook_ in two closely
printed volumes, a most repellent-looking book in appearance to those
who are used to contemporary typography, usually so attractive. Ford, in
fact, was so full of his subject that instead of a handbook he wrote a
work which ought to have appeared in half a dozen volumes. In later
editions the book was condensed into one of Mr. Murray's usual
guide-books, but the curious may still enjoy the work in its earliest
form, so rich in discussions of the Spanish people, their art and
architecture, their history and their habits. The greater part of the
letters in Mr. Prothero's collection are addressed to Addington, who was
our ambassador to Madrid for some years, until he was superseded by
George Villiers, Lord Clarendon, with whom Borrow came so much in
contact. Those letters reveal a remarkably cultivated mind and an
interesting outlook on life, an outlook that was always intensely
anti-democratic. It is impossible to sympathise with him in his brutal
reference to the execution by the Spaniards of Robert Boyd, a young
Irishman who was captured with Torrijos by the Spanish Government in
1831. Richard Ford apparently left Spain very shortly before George
Borrow entered that country. Ford passed through Madrid on his way to
England in September 1833. He then settled near Exeter, purchasing an
Elizabethan cottage called Heavitree House, with twelve acres of land,
and devoted himself to turning it into a beautiful mansion. Presumably
he first met Borrow in Mr. John Murray's famous drawing-room soon after
the publication of _The Gypsies of Spain_. He tells Addington, indeed,
in a letter of 14th January 1841:

I have made acquaintance with an extraordinary fellow, George
Borrow, who went out to Spain to convert the gypsies. He is
about to publish his failure, and a curious book it will be. It
was submitted to my perusal by the hesitating Murray.

Ford's article upon Borrow's book appeared in _The British and Foreign
Review_, and Ford was delighted that the book had created a sensation,
an