nt day his "faith"
appears to consist in a worship of the great and wise and good among the
dead. I have already spoken of many Gipsies reminding me, by their
entirely unconscious ungodliness, of thorough Hegelians. I may now add,
that, like the Positivists, they seem to correct their irreligion through
the influence of love; and by a strange custom, which is, in spirit and
fact, nothing less than adoring the departed and offering to the dead a
singular sacrifice.

He who has no house finds a home in family and friends, whence it results
that the Gipsy, despite his ferocious quarrels in the clan, and his sharp
practice even with near relations, is--all things considered--perhaps the
most devoted to kith and kin of any one in the world. His very name--rom,
a husband--indicates it. His children, as almost every writer on him,
from Grellmann down to the present day, has observed, are more thoroughly
indulged and spoiled than any non-gipsy can conceive; and despite all the
apparent contradictions caused by the selfishness born of poverty,
irritable Eastern blood, and the eccentricity of semi-civilisation, I
doubt if any man, on the whole, in the world, is more attached to his
own.

It was only three or four hours ago, as I write, on the fifth day of
February 1872, that a Gipsy said to me, "It is nine years since my wife
died, and I would give all Anglaterra to have her again."

That the real religion of the Gipsies, as I have already observed,
consists like that of the Comteists, in devotion to the dead, is
indicated by a very extraordinary custom, which, notwithstanding the very
general decay, of late years, of all their old habits, still prevails
universally. This is the refraining from some usage or indulgence in
honour of the departed--a sacrifice, as it were, to their _manes_--and I
believe that, by inquiring, it will be found to exist among all Gipsies
in all parts of the world. In England it is shown by observances which
are maintained at great personal inconvenience, sometime for years, or
during life. Thus, there are many Gipsies who, because a deceased
brother was fond of spirits, have refrained, after his departure, from
tasting them, or who have given up their favourite pursuits, for the
reason that they were last indulged in, in company with the lost and
loved one.

As a further illustration, I will give in the original Gipsy-language, as
I myself took it down rapidly, but literally, the comments of