ns of civil policy. Such as I are free in
spirit when our limbs are chained. You are imprisoned in mind, even
when your limbs are most at freedom.'

[14]'Yet the freedom of your thoughts,' said the Scot, 'relieves
not the pressure of the gyves on your limbs.'

'For a brief time that may be endured,' answered the vagrant, 'and
if within that period I cannot extricate myself, and fail of relief
from my comrades, I can always die, and death is the most perfect
freedom of all.'

Again, when asked in his last hour what are his hopes for the future,
the gypsy, after denying the existence of the soul, declares that his
anticipations are:

'To be resolved into the elements. * * * My hope and trust and
expectation is, that the mysterious frame of humanity shall melt
into the general mass of nature, to be recompounded in the other
forms with which she daily supplies those which daily disappear,
and return under different forms,--the watery particles to streams
and showers, the earthy parts to enrich their mother earth, the
airy portions to wanton in the breeze, and those of fire to supply
the blaze of Aldebaran and his brethren. In this faith I have
lived, and will die in it. Hence! begone!--disturb me no further! I
have spoken the last word that mortal ears shall listen to!'

That such a strain as this would be absurd from 'Mr. Petulengro,' or any
other of the race as portrayed by Borrow, is evident enough. Whether it
is inappropriate, however, in the mouth of one of the first corners of
the people in Europe, of direct Hindustanee blood, is another question.
Let us examine it.

In his notes to 'Quentin Durward,' Scott declares his belief that there
can be little doubt that the first gypsies consisted originally of
Hindus, who left their native land when it was invaded by Timur or
Tamerlane, and that their language is a dialect of Hindustanee. That the
gypsies were Hindus, and outcast Hindus or Pariahs at that, could be no
secret to Scott. That he should have made Hayraddin in his doctrines
marvellously true to the very life to certain of this class, indicates a
degree either of knowledge or of intuition (it may have been either)
which is at least remarkable.

The reader has probably learned to consider the Hindu Pariah as a merely
wretched outcast, ignorant, vulgar, and oppressed. Such is not, however,
exactly their _status_. Whatev