appeared in the _Standard_, brought forth the
following leading article upon the subject the following day, August
15th, in which the writer says:--"We yesterday published a letter from
Mr. George Smith, whose efforts to ameliorate and humanise the floating
and transitory population of our canals and navigable rivers have already
borne good fruit, in which he calls attention to the deserted and almost
hopeless lot of English Gipsy children. Moses Holland--the Hollands are
a Gipsy family almost as old as the Lees or the Stanleys, and a Holland
always holds high rank among the 'Romany' folk--assures Mr. Smith that in
ten of the Midland counties he knows some two hundred and fifty families
of Gipsies, and that none of their children can read or write. Bazena
Clayton, an old lady of caste, almost equal to that of a Lee or a
Holland, confirms the story. She has lived in tents all her life. She
was born in a tent, married from a tent, has brought up a family of
sixteen children, more or less, under the same friendly shelter, and
expects to breathe her last in a tent. That she can neither read nor
write goes without saying; although doubtless she knows well enough how
to 'kair her patteran,' or to make that strange cross in the dust which a
true Gipsy alway leaves behind him at his last place of sojourn, as a
mark for those of his tribe who may come upon his track. 'Patteran,' it
may be remarked, is an almost pure Sanscrit word cognate with our own
'path;' and the least philological raking among the chaff of the Gipsy
dialect will show their secret _argot_ to be, as Mr. Leland calls it, 'a
curious old tongue, not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in point
of age an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient
language.' No Sanscrit or even Greek scholar can fail to be struck by
the fact that, in the Gipsy tongue, a road is a 'drum,' to see is to
'dicker,' to get or take to 'lell,' and to go to 'jall;' or, after
instances so pregnant, to agree with Professor von Kogalnitschan that 'it
is interesting to be able to study a Hindu dialect in the heart of
Europe.' Mr. Smith, however, being a philanthropist rather than a
philologist, takes another view of the question. His anxiety is to see
the Gipsies--and especially the Gipsy children--reclaimed. 'A Gipsy,' he
reminds us, 'lives, but one can scarcely tell how; they generally locate
for a time near hen-roosts, potato-camps, turnip-fields, and
game-preserves.