s time that the
spell was broken. There are no traditions of Gipsy life worth
perpetuating; there is no sentimental halo around its history which it
would be cruel to dispel. In past ages the Gipsies have been subjected
to harsh laws and barbarous edicts; it remains for our more enlightened
times to deal with them on a humaner plan. It is only by the expanding
influence of education that the little minds of their children can gain a
necessary experience of the utility and dignity of honest labour. When
they have received some measure of instruction they will be fitter to
emerge from the aimless and vagabond life of their forefathers, and break
away from the squalor and precarious existence which has held so many
generations of them in thrall. Mr. Smith's idea is worthy the attention
of legislators. It does not look so grand on paper, we admit, but it is
a nobler thing to educate the young barbarian at home than to make war
upon the unoffending barbarian abroad. The instincts and habits which
have been transmitted from father to son for hundreds of years are not,
of course, to be eradicated in a day, or even in a generation; but the
time will, perhaps, eventually come when the Gipsies will cease to exist
as a separate and distinct people, and become absorbed into the general
population of the country. Whether that absorption takes place sooner or
later, nothing can be lost by conferring on the young 'Arabs' of the
tents the rudiments of an education which will hereafter be helpful to
them if they are desirous of abandoning their squalor and indolence, and
of earning an industrious livelihood. Their dread of fixed and
continuous occupation may die out in time, and closer intimacy with the
conditions of industrial life may teach them that civilisation has some
compensations to offer for the sacrifice of their roaming propensities,
and for taking away from them their 'free mountains, their plains and
woods, the sun, the stars, and the winds' which are the companions of
their free and unfettered, but wasted and purposeless lives."

The _Weekly Dispatch_, in a leading article, October 13th, says:--"Mr.
George Smith, of Coalville, has an eye for the nomads of the country.
His name must already be unfavourably known throughout most of the canal
barges of the United Kingdom. If he is not the Croquemitaine of every
floating nursery journeying inland from the metropolis he ought to be,
for it was mainly he who thrust a ha