der it highly probable, if not
evidently clear, that the first Gypsey tribes who came into England, and
other parts of Europe, migrated from hordes of that people who had
previously found their way into Egypt.

The evidence appears equally strong, that they were not natives of Egypt;
but as the Egyptians were in great repute for the practice of the occult
sciences, common to them and to the Suder caste; we cannot be surprized
to find these crafty itinerants, should avail themselves of such an
opportunity, as coming out of that country, to profess themselves
Egyptians.

Continental writers exhibit a strange assemblage of crude, and
incongruous ideas on the subject of Gypsey extraction. So numerous are
the opinions diffusely stated, that Grellmann must have exercised much
patient investigation, to deduce from them the rational and satisfactory
conclusions which his Dissertation presents.

Our countryman Swinborne, in describing the Gypsies in Calabria, is the
first to remark that their peculiar language bears great affinity to the
oriental tongues; and that many of their customs resemble those of the
heathens. But European ignorance of the habits and speech of Asiatics
may be accounted for, whilst the rich productions of India continued to
be brought to Egyptian ports, and to be conveyed thence by the Lombard
merchants, to be distributed over Europe

The _Cingari_, _Zigeuners_, or _Gypsies_, had been in Germany nearly a
century, before the Portuguese discovered the passage to India by the
Cape of Good Hope. The stimulus which this discovery gave to
improvements in the art of navigation, soon opened immediate intercourse
with the eastern world. Vast are the establishments, which have been
subsequently effected, in that quarter of the globe by naval powers, and
extraordinary have been, of late years, the exertions for the acquisition
of oriental languages; yet so numerous are they in those widely extended
regions, that European knowledge of Asiatic etymology, is yet but in a
state of infancy.

The case of the Gypsies is singular; for it may fairly be questioned,
whether it has a parallel in the history of the world. Dispersed over
the face of the earth, without any organization of their different
hordes; and all concert between them entirely precluded by separations of
hundreds of miles from each other, in different parts of the globe, and
by their incapacity for literary communication; they have, however,
whilst