g. Something like
ten millions of Gipsies have been born, lived, died, and gone into the
other world since they set foot upon European soil, and what have they
done? what work have they accomplished? Alas! alas! worse than a cipher
might be written against them. They have lived in the midst of beauty,
songsters, romance, and fiction, and they have been surrounded by
everything that would help to call forth natural energy, mechanical
skill, and ability, but they have been in some senses like children
playing in the street gutters. They have the elements of success within
them, but no one has taken them by the hand to put them upon the first
step, at any rate, so far as England is concerned. It is grievous to
think that not one of these ten millions of Gipsies who have gone the way
of all flesh has written a book, painted a painting, composed any poetry,
worth calling poetry, produced a minister worthy of much note--at least,
I can only hear of one or two. They have fine voices as a rule, and
except some half-dozen Gipsies no first-rate musicians have sprung from
their midst. No engineer, no mechanic--in fact, no nothing. The highest
state of their manufacturing skill has been to make a few slippers for
the feet, as some of them are doing at Lynn; skewers to stick into meat,
for which they have done nothing towards feeding; pegs to hang out other
people's linen, some tinkering, chair-bottoming, knife-grinding, and a
little light smith work, and a few have made a little money by
horse-dealing. There are others clever at "making shifts" and roadside
tents, and will put up with almost anything rather than put forth much
energy. Since the Gipsies landed in this country more than one hundred
and fifty thousand have been born, principally, as they say, "under the
hedge bottom," lived, and died. They are gone "and their works do follow
them." Their present degraded condition in this country may be laid upon
our backs.

This book, with its many faults and few virtues, is my own as in the case
of my others, and all may be laid upon my back; and my object in saying
hard and unpalatable things about the poor, ignorant Gipsy wanderers in
our midst is not to expose them to ridicule, or to cause the finger of
scorn to be pointed at them or to any one connected with them, but to try
to influence the hearts of my countrymen to extend the hand of practical
sympathy, and help to rescue the poor Gipsy children from dropping into