240 ROGERS'S DESCRIPTION OF THEM.. 



singular people have now, for four centuries, overspread the 

 face of Europe, without any distinct account having been 

 gained of their origin. A cloud has, and probably always 

 will, hang over the descent and first appearance of this most 

 mysterious race.* 



HENRIETTA. 



Thank you, aunt; I shall now take greater interest in gip- 

 sies than I have ever before felt; but how strange that people 

 should be so superstitious about fortune-telling. 



The weak are always superstitious, the greater the igno- 

 rance the greater the credulity; but in England, where there 

 are, I believe, fewer gipsies than in any country of Europe, 

 the increase of knowledge among all classes has rendered 

 their pretended arts of little avail; and were they not to pursue 

 some other trade, their skill in palmistry would not suffice to 

 procure them a subsistence. The sanguinary laws which 

 formerly existed against them in England have been repealed. 

 Who recollects the faithful and elegant description of them 

 which is given by Rogers in his " Pleasures of Memory."f 



ESTHER. 



I do not think that any of us do. Shall I get the book and 

 read it? 



MRS. F. 



If you please. 



" Down by yon hazel copse, at evening, blazed 

 The gipsy's faggot there we stood and gazed; 

 Gazed on her sun-burnt face with silent awe, 

 Her tatter'd mantle, and her hood of straw; 

 Her moving lips, her caldron brimming o'er; 

 The drowsy brood that on her back she bore, 

 Imps, in the barn with mousing owlets bred, 

 From rifled roost at nightly revel fed; 

 Whose dark eyesflash'd thro' locks of blackest shade, 



* Bright's Travels in Hungary. t 1st part. 



