236 GIPSIES. 



MRS. F. 



Indeed, Mary, I cannot consent to anything so foolish and 

 so wrong. So, take off your bonnet, and I will give you 

 some account of this idle race. 



MARY. 



Where do they come from? 



HENRIETTA. 



From Egypt, to be sure. 



MRS. F. 



Gently, Henrietta; do not decide with such confidence upon 

 a subject on which the learned are so much in doubt. Be- 

 sides, even if you had been correct, a little more modesty had 

 -been more becoming. I am always pleased when you are 

 able to give a ready answer to my inquiries; but believe 

 me, that knowledge is of little good unless it lead to that true 

 wisdom which teaches us to think humbly of ourselves. The 

 truly wise, are always the most humble, because, the more 

 they learn, the more sensible they are of how little they 

 know. Sir Isaac Newton's opinion of his own splendid re- 

 sults you all know,* and Solon, one of the wisest of heathen 

 philosophers, declared, that all he had learned from his know- 

 ledge was, " that he knew nothing." But, to return to the 

 gipsies: Grellman, a German author, who had entered into 

 a minute investigation of the subject, supposes them to be of 

 Hindoo origin, probably of the lowest castes, a conjecture 

 which he founds upon the similarity of language between the 

 Egyptians and the Hindoos. 



Do not these gipsies speak English] 



* " I know not," said he, " what the world will think of my la- 

 bors, but, to myself, it seems that I have been but as a child playing 

 on the sea-shore, now finding some pebble rather more polished, 

 and now some shell rather more agreeably variegated than another, 

 while the immense ocean of truth extended itself unexplored hefore 



