and dance after their peculiar and
fantastic style. One detects fine vocal ability now and then
exhibited by these wayward creatures, which by patient culture might
be developed into great excellence. The singing of these girls is
quite unlike such performances generally,--not particularly
harmonious, but bearing the impress of wild feeling and passionate
emotion. Many of the performers are of a marked and weird style of
beauty, and such are pretty sure to wear jewelry of an intrinsic
value far beyond the reach of honest industry,--which forms a glaring
tell-tale of their immodesty.

The gypsy race of Russia, to whom these itinerants belong, are of the
same Asiatic origin as those met with in southern Europe; no country
has power to change their nature, no association can refine them.
They will not try to live by honest labor; everywhere they are
acknowledged outcasts, and it is their nature to grovel like animals.
The cunning instinct of theft is born in them; adroitness in stealing
they consider to be a commendable accomplishment,--parents teach it
to their children. They are wanderers wherever found, begging at one
country-house and stealing at the next; in summer sleeping on the
grass, in winter digging holes and burrowing in the ground. They are
called in central Russia "Tsiganie," and they group together in
largest numbers in and about the Eastern Steppe, just as those of
Spain do at Grenada and near to the Alhambra. All kindly efforts of
the Russian government to civilize these land-rovers has utterly
failed; not infrequently it becomes necessary to invade their
quarters, and to visit condign punishment upon the tribe by sabre and
bullet, to keep them within reasonable bounds. Quite a colony of
gypsies inhabit a certain portion of Moscow, having adopted the local
dress, and also conformed ostensibly to the conventionalities about
them; but they never in reality amalgamate with other races,--they
are far more clannish than the Jews. Both the men and women ply
trades which will not bear investigation or the light of day. The
former make an open business of horse-trading, and the latter of
public-dancing, singing, and fortune-telling. Belonging to this
community is a small body of singers who practise together, and who
are employed at all public festivals in the city,--which would,
indeed, be considered quite incomplete without them. This choir
consists of six or eight female voices and four male, capable of
affo