The next efforts put forth to reform these renegades was by means
of fiction, romance, and poetry. Some writers, in their praiseworthy
endeavours to make up a medicine to improve the condition of the Gipsies,
have neutralised its effects by adding too much honey and spice to it.
Others, who have mistaken the emaciated condition of the Gipsy, have been
dosing him with cordials entirely, to such a degree, that he--Romany
_chal_--imagines he is right in everything he says and does, and he ought
to have perfect liberty to go anywhere or do anything. Some have
attempted to paint him white, and in doing so have worked up the
blackness from underneath, and presented to us a character which excites
a feeling in our notions--a kind of go-between, akin to sympathy and
disgust. Not a few have thrown round the Gipsy an enchanting, bewitching
halo, which an inspection has proved nothing less than a delusion and a
snare. Others have tried to improve this field of thistles and sour
docks by throwing a handful of daisy seeds among them. It requires
something more than a phantom life-boat to rescue the Gipsy and bring him
to land. Scents and perfumes in a death-bed chamber only last for a
short time. A bottle of rose-water thrown into a room where
decomposition is at work upon a body will not restore life. Scattering
flowers upon a cesspool of iniquity will not purify it. A fictitious
rope composed of beautiful ideas is not the thing to save drowning Gipsy
children. To put artificially-coloured feathers upon the head of a Gipsy
child dressed in rags and shreds, with his body literally teeming with
vermin and filth, will not make him presentable at court or a fit subject
for a drawing-room. To dress the Satanic, demon-looking face of a Gipsy
with the violet-powder of imagery only temporally hides from view the
repulsive aspect of his features. The first storm of persecution brings
him out again in his true colour. The forked light of imagination thrown
across the heavens on a dark night is not the best to reveal the
character of a Gipsy and set him upon the highways for usefulness and
heaven. The dramatist has strutted the Gipsy across the stage in various
characters in his endeavour to improve his condition. After the fine
colours have been doffed, music finished, applause ceased, curtain
dropped, and scene ended, he has been a black, swarthy, idle, thieving,
lying, blackguard of a Gipsy still. Applause, fine colours, and d