Borrow and Carlyle could not possibly have had friends in common.

Borrow was drawn towards this William Glen by his enthusiasm for the Persian language.
But Glen departed out of his life very quickly.

Hasfeld, who entered it about the same time, was to stay longer.

Hasfeld was a Dane, now thirty-three years of age, who, after a period in the Foreign Office at Copenhagen, had come to St.Petersburg as an interpreter to the Danish Legation, but made quite a good income as a professor of European languages in cadet schools and elsewhere.

The English language and literature would seem to have been his favourite topic.