ife_. Should the parents object, like the
thoughtless and imprudent persons in higher life, who flee to Gretna
Green, the Gipsy lovers also escape from their parents to another
district. When the couple are again met by the friends of the female,
they take her from her protector; but if it appear that he has treated
her kindly, and is likely to continue to do so, they restore her to him,
and all objections and animosities are forgotten.

As it seldom happens that they now stay more than a few days in one
place, the Gipsy, his wife, and each of their children, may severally
belong to different parishes. This is an objection to their ultimate
settlement in any one place. It will be some time before this objection
can be removed: not till the present generation of Gipsies has passed
away, and their posterity cease to make the wilderness their homes,
choosing a parish for a permanent place of settlement.

It may naturally be expected that these inhabitants of the field and
forest, the lane and the moor, are not without a knowledge of the
medicinal qualities of certain herbs. In all slight disorders they have
recourse to these remedies, and frequently use the inner bark of the elm,
star-in-the-earth, parsley, pellitory-in-the-wall, and wormwood. They
are not subject to the numerous disorders and fevers common in large
towns; but in some instances they are visited with that dreadful scourge
of the British nation, the Typhus fever, which spreads through their
little camp, and becomes fatal to some of its families. The small-pox
and measles are disorders they very much dread; but they are not more
disposed to rheumatic affections than those who live in houses. It is a
fact, however, that ought not to be passed over here, that when they
leave their tents to settle in towns, they are generally ill for a time.
The children of one family that wintered with us in 1831, were nearly all
attacked with fever that threatened their lives. This may be occasioned
by their taking all at once to regular habits, and the renunciation of
that exercise to which they have been so long accustomed, with some
disposing qualities in their change of diet and the atmosphere of a
thickly populated town.

This people often live to a considerable age, many instances of which are
well known. In his tent at Launton, Oxfordshire, died in the year 1830,
more than a hundred years of age, James Smith, called by some, the King
of the Gipsies. By his