iating every attempt at reformation."

"F. G. S." writes:--"One of your correspondents suggests that the silence
of the Gipsies concerning their dead is carried so far as to consign them
to nameless graves. In my churchyard there is a headstone, 'to the
memory of Mistress Paul Stanley, wife of Mr. Paul Stanley, who died
November, 1797,' the said Mistress Stanley having been the Queen of the
Stanley tribe. In my childhood I remember that annually some of the
members of the tribe used to come and scatter flowers over the grave; and
when my father had restored the stone, on its falling into decay, a
deputation of the tribe thanked him for so doing. I have reason to think
they still visit the spot, to find, I am sorry to say, the stone so
decayed now as to be past restoration, and I would much like to see
another with the same inscription to mark the resting-place of the head
of a leading tribe of these interesting people."

[Picture: Gipsies Camping among the Heath near London]

To these letters I replied as under, on August 21st:--"The numerous
correspondents who have taken upon themselves to reply to my letter that
appeared in your issue of the 14th inst., and to show up Gipsy life in
some of its brightest aspects, have, unwittingly, no doubt, thoroughly
substantiated and backed up the cause of my young clients--_i.e._, the
poor Gipsy children and our roadside arabs--so far as they have gone, as
a reperusal of the letters will show the most casual observer of our
hedge-bottom heathens of Christendom. At the same time, I would say the
tendency of some of the remarks of your correspondents has special
reference to the adult Gipsies, roamers and ramblers, and, consequently,
there is a fear that the attention of some of your readers may be drawn
from the cause of the poor uneducated children, living in the midst of
sticks, stones, ditches, mud, and game, and concentrated upon the 'guinea
buttons,' 'black-haired Susans,' 'red cloaks,' 'scarlet hoods,' the
cunning craft of the old men, the fortune-telling of the old women, the
'sparkling eyes' and 'clapping of hands,' and 'twopenny hops' of the
young women, who certainly can take care of themselves, just as other
un-Christianised and uncivilised human beings can. I do not profess--at
any rate, not for the present--to take up the cause of the men and women
ditch-dwelling Gipsies in this matter; I must leave that part of the work
to fiction writers, clergymen, an