ill thank Heaven that their brothers, their sons, their husbands
"are not even as these are."

LUCY H. HOOPER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

GYPSY MUSIC IN HUNGARY.

We have all, at some time or other, felt our curiosity and interest
excited by the bands of wandering gypsies whom we may sometimes have
come upon in their encampments pitched in some remote or sequestered
wood or dell--wild-looking men and women and dark, ragged children
grouped about fires over which hang kettles suspended from stakes
arranged in a triangle; mongrel curs which seem to share their masters'
instinctive distrust of strangers; and donkeys browsing near the tilted
carts which convey the tribe from one place to another. We feel a sort
of traditional repulsion for these people, almost amounting to dread,
for stories of children stolen by gypsies, and of their dark, mysterious
ways, have taken root in our infant minds along with those of ghosts and
goblins, robbers and Indians. There are, it is true, romantic
associations connected with them, and we try to fancy a Meg Merrilies in
the swarthy old woman who examines the lines of our hand and tells us
the past, present and future--sometimes with a startling consistency and
probability. But few of us would have supposed that this race of
vagabonds and outcasts had ever risen much above their traditional
occupation of tinkering, far less that any portion of it had displayed
original artistic genius. We have, however, from Robert Franz the
composer a most interesting account of the wonderful music of the
Hungarian gypsies or Tziganys, which he had several opportunities of
hearing during a visit to a friend in Hungary. He had been much
impressed in his youth by the wandering apparitions of these people in
the streets of Kiev, and by the strange, wild dances of their women,
whose outlandish garb was rendered still more effective by the pieces of
red stuff cut into hearts and sewed all over their skirts. "These
caravans of strange beings, who preserve under every sky their dreamy
laziness, their rebellion against the yoke, their love of solitude," had
always possessed an irresistible charm for him, and he had never
understood the scorn and disgust of which they were the object.

Being informed of the arrival of a gypsy band within eight or ten miles
of his friend's chateau, he took his immediate departure for the forest
where they had made their temporary home. The sun was going down when he
r