in anything deeply seated. It would be difficult, I
think, for any highly civilised man, who had not studied Thought deeply,
and in a liberal spirit, to approach in the least to a rational
comprehension of a real Gipsy mind. During my life it has been my
fortune to become intimate with men who were "absolutely" or "positively"
free-thinkers--men who had, by long study and mere logic, completely
freed themselves from any mental tie whatever. Such men are rare; it
requires an enormous amount of intellectual culture, an unlimited
expenditure of pains in the metaphysical hot-bed, and tremendous self-
confidence to produce them--I mean "the real article." Among the most
thorough of these, a man on whom utter and entire freedom of thought sat
easily and unconsciously, was a certain German doctor of philosophy named
P---. To him God and all things were simply ideas of development. The
last remark which I can recall from him was "_Ja, ja_. We advanced
Hegelians agree exactly on the whole with the Materialists." Now, to my
mind, nothing seems more natural than that, when sitting entire days
talking with an old Gipsy, no one rises so frequently from the past
before me as Mr P---. To him all religion represented a portion of the
vast mass of frozen, petrified developments, which simply impede the
march of intelligent minds; to my Rommany friend, it is one of the
thousand inventions of _gorgio_ life, which, like policemen, are simply
obstacles to Gipsies in the search of a living, and could he have grasped
the circumstances of the case, he would doubtless have replied "_Avali_,
we Gipsies agree on the whole exactly with Mr P---." Extremes meet.

One Sunday an old Gipsy was assuring me, with a great appearance of
piety, that on that day she neither told fortunes nor worked at any kind
of labour--in fact, she kept it altogether correctly.

"_Avali_, _dye_," I replied. "Do you know what the Gipsies in Germany
say became of their church?"

"_Kek_," answered the old lady. "No. What is it?"

"They say that the Gipsies' church was made of pork, and the dogs ate
it."

Long, loud, and joyously affirmative was the peal of laughter with which
the Gipsies welcomed this characteristic story.

So far as research and the analogy of living tribes of the same race can
establish a fact, it would seem that the Gipsies were, previous to their
quitting India, not people of high caste, but wandering Pariahs,
outcasts, foes to the Brah