he
forthwith broke the mould.' The last time I ever saw him was
shortly before he left London to live in the country. It was, I
remember well, on Waterloo Bridge, where I had stopped to gaze
at a sunset of singular and striking splendour, whose gorgeous
clouds and ruddy mists were reeling and boiling over the
West-End. Borrow came up and stood leaning over the parapet,
entranced by the sight, as well he might be. Like most people
born in flat districts, he had a passion for sunsets. Turner
could not have painted that one, I think, and certainly my pen
could not describe it; for the London smoke was flushed by the
sinking sun, and had lost its dunness, and, reddening every
moment as it rose above the roofs, steeples, and towers, it
went curling round the sinking sun in a rosy vapour, leaving,
however, just a segment of a golden rim, which gleamed as
dazzlingly as in the thinnest and clearest air--a peculiar
effect which struck Borrow deeply. I never saw such a sunset
before or since, not even on Waterloo Bridge; and from its
association with 'the last of Borrow' I shall never forget
it.[244]

Mr. Watts-Dunton concludes his reminiscences--the most valuable personal
record that we have of Borrow--with a sonnet that now has its place in
literature:

We talked of 'Children of the Open Air'
Who once in Orient valleys lived aloof,
Loving the sun, the wind, the sweet reproof
Of storms, and all that makes the fair earth fair,
Till, on a day, across the mystic bar
Of moonrise, came the 'Children of the Roof,'
Who find no balm 'neath Evening's rosiest woof,
Nor dews of peace beneath the Morning Star.
We looked o'er London where men wither and choke,
Roofed in, poor souls, renouncing stars and skies,
And lore of woods and wild wind-prophecies--
Yea, every voice that to their fathers spoke:
And sweet it seemed to die ere bricks and smoke
Leave never a meadow outside Paradise.

FOOTNOTES:

[237] Theodore Watts-Dunton's memoir of Thomas Gordon Hake in the
_Athenaeum_, January 19, 1895.

An interesting letter that I have received from Mr. Watts-Dunton clears
up several points and may well have place here:--

'THE PINES, 11 PUTNEY HILL, S.W., _31st May 1913._

'You ask me what I have written upon George Borrow. When Borrow died
(26th July 1881