him "could assuredly be done by any boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution' (p 30). Mill says of his father:

"Nor did he think it possible to set any positive bounds to the moral capabilities which might unfold themselves in mankind under an enlightened direction of social and educational influences (p. 179), [provided that the worship of God, or even the belief in his existence, or religion in any shape, be banished from the world.]

But that is in direct contradiction to what he said, as we have just seen" He would sometimes say that if life were made what it might be, by good government [the English was certainly a good government] and good education, it would be worth having; but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility' (p. 48). He must have been difficult to please with both government and education. John Stuart Mill gives it as his own opinion that "education, habit and the cultivation of the sentiments, will make a common man [why a common man?] dig or weave for his country as readily as fight for his country (p. 232). His "country" has always paid, and always expects to pay, for these,

as well as all other services.

John Stuart Mill seems to have boxed the compass on almost all the subjects he touched: but he never did it on religion, for he never had one to change. He appears to have kept or lost the count of his changes; at least, he speaks of " the third period of his mental progress," but does not mention the changes during each of these periods. The following is a list of some of them, arranged alphabetically :—

Third period of my mental progress.
Transformation in my opinions.
Transition in my mode of thought.

He was capable of working a good deal of mischief during his lifetime, with people lacking the capacity or knowledge to reject his nostrums, and partly because of the half-mythical kind of mystery surrounding him, and the uncertainty regarding his religious opinions. In the Autobiography such people will not find a sound moral or manly sentiment of any importance; but much to create a disgust for the father, and a pity for the son for being subjected to the training he received; as well as anything but a respect for the want of judgment and natural feeling displayed throughout it. It is unnecessary to speak of his radicalism, democracy, womens' rights-ism, socialism, St. Simonism, Owenism, or demagogism generally. But all, or almost all, of his peculiarities could have been forgiven him, had he not, after seeing nearly the three-score and ten, and receiving many public honours, stated in his posthumous writings that he never had any religion, or apparently a feeling of it, or belief in the existence of God, and glorying in the same; thus putting himself, in that respect, on a level with the brutes that perish.

His writings must stand on their merits and the circumstances under which they were produced; and so must the personal and conventional virtues and peculiarities by which he may have been characterized. His Autobiography shows a wonderful egotism as regards himself and all connected with him—all apparently practical atheists; an egotism which nothing would seem to have been capable of affecting, except perhaps to anger him for the moment; for in other respects we could imagine it to have been insensible to a hint and indifferent to a rebuke. When writing it, he may have imagined, in his ignorance of

E cannot but think that the last

W few years have wrought sad havoc with these queer wanderers; for a long time they stoutly withstood the inroads of civilization, but now, like many other romantic nuisances, they are being improved off the face of the earth. We can hardly sympathise with the sorrow Mr. Simson would doubtless have felt, had he been alive, at their extinction." t

I confess I felt surprised on read

ing the above in Land and Water of the 19th July, in the face of the author showing that the Gipsies had only changed their style of life, from an out-door to a settled condition, and were following a variety of callings common to the ordinary natives of the country. In my addition to the work I showed, fully and elaborate

In a comparatively late number of Chambers' Journal is the following:-"As the wild-cat, the otter and the wolf generally disappear before the advance of civilization, the wild races of mankind are, in like manner and degree, gradually coming to an end, and from the same causes [1]. The waste lands get enclosed, the woods are cut down, the police be comes yearly more efficient, and the Pariahs vanish with their means of subsistence. [Cannot they find' means of subsistence' away from the waste lands and the woods?] In England there are at most 1,500 Gipsies. Before the end of the present century they will probably be extinct over Western Europe." [!]

The Athenæum, on the 3d December, 1870, says: "The rest of this people, who are scattered over Europe, and who are disappearing gradually with the in crease of the civilization that surrounds them." And the Saturday Review, on the 29th November, 1873, writes:-"“In this country the gradual enclosure of commons and waste lands, with other discouragements to vagabond life, can hard ly fail ere long to extinguish the race."

ate their existence, in a mixed, settled, and more or less civilized state; and that been that there cannot be less than so prolific has the race 250,000 Gipsies of all castes, colours, characters, occupations, degrees of education, culture, and position in life, in the British Isles alone, and possibly double that number." The subject of the Gipsies stands thus on an entirely different footing from what has hitherto been believed of it. The idea is novel, but why should anything, merely because it is novel, be tacitly or actually proscribed; to say nothing of those amenities and courtesies that are supposed to be observed in the republic of letters, and particularly between those of the two continents? If such a course had been followed in other matters, and the impression of society, however illfounded, had been the only test of

truth, where would humanity have been to-day? Knowledge would never have progressed, and we would have been in a condition little better than that of semi-barbarism. What reason could any one advance in favour of the Gipsies" ceasing to be Gipsies" by disappearing from the roads, woods, and fields? And how could he maintain that position as a matter of fact? Look at a tent of such of the Gipsies as still go about, when all the family are together, and see how prolific they are, and consider that it has been so from at least the time of Henry VIII. How could any one say that the progeny and descendants of this people had no more affinity with the tribe, or even knowledge of it, than the company that played the part on the stage the night before?

The true position of the Gipsies is described as follows:-" Here we have ethnology on its legs-a wild Oriental race dropt into the midst of all the nations of Europe, and legally and socially proscribed by them, yet drawing into their body much of the blood of other people and incorporating it with their own, and assimilating to the manners of the countries in which they live; sometimes threading their way by marriage through native families, and maintaining their identity, in a more or less mixed state, in the world, notwithstanding their having no religion peculiar to themselves, like

the Jews." In the Gipsies we have a race, mixed as it is, that is distinct from any other, having blood, language or words, a cast of mind, signs, and a sort of masonic society extending over the world-all of comparatively recent appearance in Europe-which hold them together in feeling and, to a certain extent, association, in the face of the popular prejudice against the name, which none of them will acknowledge, after leaving the tent for "tramping" or any calling in settled society. There is in this subject, when fully explained, much to interest a variety of societies, classes of people, and kinds of readers; who cannot say when investigating it that they do not find facts and arguments to demonstrate what is set forth, for the work contains a superabundance of such. In approaching the subject, however, it is necessary that people should divest themselves of preconceived ideas, and advance in it as far as the facts will lead them. They should likewise show that moral and social courage, in the face of public opinion, that is so necessary towards acknowledging the tribe, and extending to it the respect that is shown to similar classes of the ordinary natives, whatever the origin of the former, and their sympathies with the tribe at home or scattered over the world.*

* Dated August 20th, 1873.

THE

It cannot be said that Mr. Borrow has obeyed this law in regard to the Gipsies, for, as far as my memory serves me, he has neglected to comment on, admit, or reject the facts and opinions of his

case as discovered and advanced by others, assuming that he ever examined them; and has put forth his own ideas only, as if nothing had been said by others before or besides him, and given inconsiderate and vague suppositions for realities, and unfounded and illogical assertions for carefully-considered inductive reasonings.

The History of the Gipsies, with Specimens of the Gipsy Language, by Walter Simson, with Preface, Introduction and Notes, and a Disquisition on the past, present, and future of the race, by myself, published towards the end of 1865, contained, in my opinion, an ample refutation of much that Mr. Borrow had advanced; but I did not expect him to make any reply to it, and far less admit what was advanced and, I may say, proved. The book just published by him, under the title of Romano Lavo-Lil, has fully justified my conclusion; for he has completely ignored all that was said, and will apparently do so for the future, if the world will allow him to do it. As an author, he is evidently a very self-willed, opinionative, and capricious gentleman, that is full of hard, hide-bound dogmatisms that are difficult of being driven out of him, whatever the means that may be resorted to for that purpose.

As the History of the Gipsies has apparently been little noticed, and I dare say as little read (although doubtless seen by Mr. Borrow), I will give some extracts from it, bear ing on him, with regard to the most important parts of what he has written on the subject. These, however, are only a part of what has been said in regard to him; and for the remainder the reader is referred to his name in the index to the book itself. What is contained in these extracts will be all the more satisfactory on account of it not having been got up for the present occasion, but confirmed by nine years' reflection since the history

appeared; while it applies to much that is contained in the work just published.*

It strikes me as something very singular that Mr. Borrow, "whose acquaintance with the Gipsy race, in general, dates from a very early period of his life;" who "has lived more with Gipsies than Scotchmen;" and than whom "no one ever enjoyed better opportunities for a close scrutiny of their ways and habits," should have told us so little about the Gipsies. In all his writings on the Gipsies, he alludes to two mixed Gipsies only-the Spanish half-pay captain, and the English flaming tinmanin a way as if these were the merest of accidents, and meant nothing. He has told us nothing of the Gipsies but what was known before, with the exception, as far as my memory serves me, of the custom of the Spanish Gipsy dressing her daughter in such a way as to protect her virginity; the existence of the tribe, in a civilized state, in Moscow; and the habit of the members of the race possessing two names; all of which are, tion. In Mr. Borrow's writings upon doubtless, interesting pieces of informathe Gipsies, we find only sketches of certain individuals of the race, whom he seems to have fallen in with, and not a proper account of the nation. These writings have done more injury to the tribe than, perhaps, anything that ever appeared on the subject. I have met with Gipsies-respectable young menwho complained bitterly of Mr. Borrow's account of their race; and they Idid that with good reason; for his attempt at generalization on the subject of the people is as great a curiosity as ever I set my eyes upon. satisfactory are Mr. Borrow's opinions of the "decadence" of the race, when on the Gipsy question, when he speaks it is only passing from its first stage of

How un

* When the extracts are from my contribution to the work, they will be so marked; the others are from the history proper. I make no apology for the length of the extracts given in this article, for the reason that a meal is more acceptable than a tantalizing mouthful. What I have said of a naturalist applies equally well to this subject, that one "cannot be too full and circumstantial, exact and logical in his information, to make it of any use in settling a question like the one under consideration" (p. 36.)