rue
types and traits of Indian character, especially of the lower orders and
those who have lost caste; the Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Roumanians,
Hungarians, and Spaniards sink into insignificance when compared with the
Afghans, Hindus, and other inhabitants of some of the worst parts of
India. Any one observing the Gipsies closely, as I have been trying to
do for some time, outside their mystery boxes, with their thin, flimsy
veil of romance and superstitious turn of their faces, will soon discover
their Indian character. Of course their intermixture with Circassians
and other nations, in the course of their travels from India, during five
or six centuries, till the time they arrived at our doors, has brought,
and is still bringing, to the surface the blighted flowers of humanity,
whose ancestral tree derived its nourishment from the soil of Arabia,
Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, Hungary,
Norway, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, Ireland, Scotland,
and Wales, as the muddy stream of Gipsyism has been winding its way for
ages through various parts of the world; and, I am sorry to say, this
little dark stream has been casting forth an unpleasant odour and a
horrible stench in our midst, which has so long been fed and augmented by
the dregs of English society from Sunday-schools and the hearthstones of
pious parents. The different nationalities to be seen among the Gipsies,
in their camps and tents, may be looked upon as so many bastard
off-shoots from the main trunk of the trees that have been met with in
their wanderings.

In no part of the globe, owing principally to our isolation, is the old
Gipsy character losing itself among the street-gutter rabble as in our
own; notwithstanding this mixture of blood and races, the diabolical
Indian elements are easily recognisable in their wigwams. Then, again,
their Indian origin can be traced in many of their social habits; among
others, they squat upon the ground differently to the Turk, Arab, and
other nationalities, who are pointed to by some writers as being the
ancestors of the Gipsies. Their tramping over the hills and plains of
India, and exposure to all the changes of the climate, has no doubt
fitted them, physically, for the kind of life they are leading in various
parts of the world. To-day Gipsies are to be found in almost every part
of the civilised countries, between the frozen regions of Siberia and the
burning sands of