real letter from a real Gypsy to her lover. As it was obviously
impossible for me to answer the queries individually, I take this
opportunity of saying that the Sinfi of _Aylwin_ and the Sinfi
described in my introduction to _Lavengro_ are one and the same
character--except that the story of the child Sinfi's weeping for the
'poor dead Gorgios' in the churchyard, given in the Introduction, is
really told by the Gypsies, not of Sinfi, but of Rhona Boswell. Sinfi
is the character alluded to in the now famous sonnet describing 'the
walking lord of Gypsy lore,' Borrow, by his most intimate friend Dr.
Gordon Hake.

'And he, the walking lord of Gypsy lore!
How often 'mid the deer that grazed the Park,
Or in the fields and heath and windy moor,
Made musical with many a soaring lark,
Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
While Lavengro, then towering by your side,
With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
To tell the legends of the fading race--.
As at the summons of his piercing glance,
Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
While you called up that pendant of romance
To Petulengro with his boxing glory
Your Amazonian Sinfi's noble story?'

Now that so many of the griengroes (horse-dealers), who form the
aristocracy of the Romany race, have left England for America, it is
natural enough that to some readers of _Aylwin_ and _The
Coming of Love_ my pictures of Romany life seem a little