them that they may feast their
palates with ardent spirits. Nothing can exceed the unrestrained
depravity of manners existing among them. Unchecked by any idea of shame
they give way to every libidinous desire. The mother endeavours by the
most scandalous arts to train up her daughter for an offering to
sensuality, and she is scarcely grown up before she becomes the seducer
of others. Laziness is so prevalent among them that were they to subsist
by their own labour only, they would hardly have bread for two of the
seven days in the week. This indolence increases their propensity to
stealing and cheating. They seek to avail themselves of every
opportunity to satisfy their lawless desires. Their universal bad
character, therefore, for fickleness, infidelity, ingratitude, revenge,
malice, rage, depravity, laziness, knavery, thievishness, and cunning,
though not deficient in capacity and cleverness, renders them people of
no use in society. The boys will run like wild things after carrion, let
it stink ever so much, and where a mortality happens among the cattle,
there these wretched creatures are to be found in the greatest numbers."

So devilish are their hearts, deep-rooted their revenge, and violent
their language under its impulse, that it is woe to the man who comes
within their clutches, if he does not possess an amount of tact
sufficient to cope with them. A man who desires to tackle the Gipsies
must have his hands out of his pockets, "all his buttons on," "his head
screwed upon the right place," and no fool, or he will be swamped before
he leaves the place. This I experienced myself a week or two since.
During the months of November and December of last year, my friend, the
_Illustrated London News_, had a number of faithful sketches showing
Gipsy life round London; these, it seems, with the truthful description I
have given of the Gipsies, in my letters, papers, &c., encouraged by the
untruthful, silly, and unwise remarks of a clergyman, not overdone with
too much wisdom and common sense, residing in the neighbourhood of N---
Hill, seemed to have raised the ire of the Gipsies in the neighbour hood
of L--- Road (I will not go so far as to say that the minister of Christ
Church did it designedly, if he did, and with the idea of stopping the
work of education among the Gipsy children--it is certain that this
farthing rushlight has mistaken his calling) to such an extent that a
friend wrote to me, stating th