ny day, circumstances considered--and where does
the blame lay?--upon our own shoulders for not paying more attention to
the education and welfare of their children. It is truly horrible to
think that we have had 15,000 to 20,000 young and old Gipsies at work,
carrying out the designs of the infernal regions at the tip end of the
roots of our national life, vigour, and Christianity.

Only the other day the country was much shocked, and rightly so, at a
hundred poor Russian emigrants landing upon our shores; and yet we have
two hundred times this quantity of Gipsies among us, and we quietly stand
by and take no notice of their wretched condition. The time will come,
and that speedily, when we shall have the scales taken off our eyes, and
the thin, flimsy veil of romance torn to shreds. Sitting by and admiring
their "pretty faces" and "witching eyes" will not save their souls,
educate their children, or put them in the way of earning an honest
livelihood. It is not pity--whining, sycophantic pity--alone that will
do them good. The Rev. Mr. Cobbin's Gipsy's petition, written fifty
years ago,

"Oh! ye who have tasted of mercy and love,
And shared in the blessings of pardoning grace,
Let us the kind fruits of your tenderness prove,
And pity, oh! pity, the poor Gipsy race."

has been little better than beating the air, and it may be repeated a
thousand times, but if nothing further is done more than "pity," the
Gipsies will be worse off in fifty years hence than they are now, nor
will presenting to them bread, cheese, ale, blankets, stockings, and a
dry sermon, as Mr. Crabb did half a century ago, render them permanent
help. We must do as the eagle does with her young: we must cause a
little fluster among them, so that they may begin to flounder for
themselves. Take them up, turn them out, and teach them to use their own
wings, and the schoolmaster and sanitary officers are the agencies to do
it. The men are clever and can get money sufficient to keep their
families comfortable even at skewer-making and chair-mending, &c., if
they will only work. All the police-officer must do will be to take
charge of those who prefer to fall to the ground rather than to struggle
for life with its attendant pleasures and enjoyments. The State has
taken in hand a more dangerous class--perhaps the most dangerous--in
India, viz., the Thugs, and is teaching them useful trades and honest
industry with most encou