nd feeling,
The blackest wild Tsigan be true,
And love, like light in dungeons stealing,
Though bars be there, will still burst through.

It is the reecho of more than one song of those strange lands, of more
than one voice, and of many a melody; and those who have heard them,
though not more distinctly than Francois Villon when he spoke of flinging
the question back by silent lake and streamlet lone, will understand me,
and say it is true to nature.

In a late work on Magyarland, by a lady Fellow of the Carpathian Society,
I find more on Hungarian gypsy music, which is so well written that I
quote fully from it, being of the opinion that one ought, when setting
forth any subject, to give quite as good an opportunity to others who are
in our business as to ourselves. And truly this lady has felt the charm
of the Tsigan music and describes it so well that one wishes she were a
Romany in language and by adoption, like unto a dozen dames and damsels
whom I know.

"The Magyars have a perfect passion for this gypsy music, and there
is nothing that appeals so powerfully to their emotions, whether of
joy or sorrow. These singular musicians are, as a rule, well taught,
and can play almost any music, greatly preferring, however, their own
compositions. Their music, consequently, is highly characteristic.
It is the language of their lives and strange surroundings, a wild,
weird banshee music: now all joy and sparkle, like sunshine on the
plains; now sullen, sad, and pathetic by turns, like the wail of a
crushed and oppressed people,--an echo, it is said, of the minstrelsy
of the _hegedosok_ or Hungarian bards, but sounding to our ears like
the more distant echo of that exceeding bitter cry, uttered long
centuries ago by their forefathers under Egyptian bondage, and borne
over the time-waves of thousands of years, breaking forth in their
music of to-day."

Here I interrupt the lady--with all due courtesy--to remark that I cannot
agree with her, nor with her probable authority, Walter Simson, in
believing that the gypsies are the descendants of the mixed races who
followed Moses out of Egypt. The Rom in Egypt is a Hindoo stranger now,
as he ever was. But that the echo of centuries of outlawry and
wretchedness and wildness rises and falls, like the ineffable discord in
a wind-harp, in Romany airs is true enough, whatever its origin may have
been. Bu