wn devices. Idleness and
ignorance, unless the whole race of moralists have combined to represent
things falsely, are the parents of every sort of vice, and the average
Gipsy child would appear to be brought up in a condition which is the _ne
plus ultra_ of both. It is true that Gipsies do not very often make
their appearance in courts of justice, but this is partly owing to the
cunning with which their peccadilloes are practised, partly to their
well-known habit of sticking by one another, and still more to the mild
but very definite terrorism which they exercise. Country residents, when
a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know that a certain amount of
blackmail in this way or that has to be paid, and that in their own time
the strangers, if not interfered with, will go. Interference with them
is apt to bring down a visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the 'red
cock,' whose crowings usually cost a good deal more than a stray chicken
here and a vanished blanket there. So the Ishmaelites are left pretty
much alone to wander about from roadside patch to roadside patch to pick
up a living somehow or other, and to exist in the condition of
undisturbed freedom and filth which appears to be all that they desire.

"The gloss has long been taken off the picture which imaginative persons
used to varnish for themselves as to the Romany. Nor, perhaps is any
country in Europe so little fitted for these gentry as ours. England is
every year becoming more and more enclosed, and the spaces which are not
enclosed are more and more carefully looked after. Whether in our
climate open-air living was ever thoroughly satisfactory is a question
not easy to answer. But even if we admit that it might have been merry
in good greenwood under the conditions picturesquely described in
ballads, the admission does not extend to the present day. There is no
good greenwood now, except a few insignificant patches, which are pretty
sharply preserved; and the killing of game, except on a small scale and
at considerable risk, is difficult. The cheapness of modern manufactures
has interfered a good deal with the various trades of mending, mankind
having made up their minds that it is better to buy new things and throw
them away when they fail than to have them patched and cobbled.
Fortune-telling is a resource to some extent, but even this is meddled
with by the Gorgio and his laws. The _raison d'etre_ of the vagabond
Gipsy is getting smaller a