74 Hark Away. 



tainly if I had to herd with such companions. Half 

 Romany, half tramp, and wholly hawkers ; dealing in 

 brooms and tin ware. Gipsies indeed ! I too came 

 from Havering-at-ye-Bower, but it is many, many 

 long years since — in my hot days, when George IV. 

 was king. Did I not know the Lees and the Coopers, 

 who were accustomed to set up their tents in the 

 leafy glades of Hainhault and Epping forests in 

 those days % Does that dirty, ragged, unkempt, 

 pedlar-like young woman, bear the slightest resem- 

 blance to the olive-complexioned, dark-eyed, beau- 

 tiful daughter of Gipsy Lee, with whom I used to 

 wander beneath the greenwood shade ? (It is many 

 years ago, remember.) Should I have wooed so dirty 

 a damsel? Faugh! The age of chivalry is past; 

 the days of romance are over, and we are, in my 

 opinion, too practical by half now-a-days ; but I do 

 not know if we are any happier or better for it, for 

 the matter of that. At any rate, the gipsy girl of 

 whom the poets raved, and whose features were 

 immortalised by the painters of the period, is like the 

 Dodo, a thing of the past, and is no longer to be 

 found in the haunts where she once loved to dwell, 

 casting a glamour over the mind of ardent and sus- 

 ceptible youth, and foretelling wonderful fortunes to 

 the maids of merry England in days gone by. 



Then, throwing a few halfpence to the ragged 

 urchin, who dismounts from the gate on which he 

 has been swinging to let me through, I journey 

 along one of the interminable Devonshire lanes, wide 

 enough for one vehicle only to pass along at a time, 

 with tall, luxuriant, uncut hedges from fifteen to 

 twenty feet in height; the banks clothed with 



