etter than
a manure-heap, in fact sometimes it is completely rotten, and as a Gipsy
woman told me last week, "it is not fit to be handled with the hands."
In noticing that many of the Gipsy children have a kind of eye disease, I
am told by the women that it is owing to the sulphur arising from the
coke fire they have upon the ground in their midst, and which at times
also causes the children to turn pale and sickly.'"

The following brief account of the Hungarian Gipsies of the present day,
as seen by a writer under the initials "A. C.," who visited the Unitarian
Synod in Hungary last summer, is taken from the _Unitarian Herald_,
bearing date January 9th, 1880, and in which the author says:--"Not far
from Rugonfalva we came on a colony of exceedingly squalid Gipsies,
living in huts which a respectable Zulu would utterly despise. Their
appearance reminded me of Cowper's graphic sketch, which I am tempted to
quote:--

"'I see a column of slow-rising smoke
O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild.
A vagabond and useless tribe there eat
Their miserable meal. A kettle, flung
Between two poles upon a stick transverse,
Receives the morsel--flesh obscene of dog,
Or vermin, or, at best, of cock purloined
From his accustomed perch. Hard-faring race,
They pick their fuel out of every hedge,
Which, kindled with dry leaves, just saves unqueuched
The spark of life. The sportive wind blows wide
Their fluttering rags, and shows a tawny skin,
The vellum of the livery they claim.'

"Transylvania is one great museum of human as well as natural products,
and this singular race forms an interesting element of its motley
population. It is supposed that the tribe found its way to Hungary in
the beginning of the fifteenth century, having fled from Central Asia or
India during the Mongol reign of terror. About the close of last century
Pastor Benedict, of Debreczin, mastered their language, and on visiting
England found that the Gipsies in this country understood him very well.
There are now about eighty thousand of them in Transylvania, but
three-fourths of this number have settled homes, and caste distinctions
are so strong that the higher grades would not drink from a cup used by
one of their half-savage brethren. On reaching the mansion of Mr.
Jakabhazi, at Simenfalva, who employs about one hundred and forty
civilised Gipsies on his estate, we had an opportunity after dinne