country in which they reside; and though they are no great frequenters either of mosques or churches, they generally conform to rites and ceremonies as they find them established. Grellman says that, in Germany, they seldom think of any marriage ceremony; but their children are baptized and the mothers churched. In England their children are baptized, and their dead buried, according to the rites of the church; perhaps the marriage ceremony is not more regarded than in Germany; but it is certain they are sometimes married in churches. Upon the whole, as Grellman observes, we may certainly regard the Gipsies as a singular phenomenon in Europe. For the space of between three and four hundred years they have gone wandering about like pilgrims and strangers, yet neither time nor example has made in them any alteration: they remain ever and every where what their fathers were: Africa makes them no blacker, nor does Europe make them whiter. Few of the descendants of the aboriginal Gipsies are to be found any where in Europe, and in England less than any where else. The severity of the police against this description of the degenerate vagabonds existing at the present day, have considerably thinned their phalanxes, and brought them to something like a due sense of the laws and expectations of civilized society. What remains of them, nevertheless, contrive one way or other to elude the vigilance of the laws by different masked callings, under which they ostensibly appear to carry on their usual traffic. The modern Gipsies pretend that they derive their origin from the ancient Egyptians, who were famous for their knowledge in astronomy and other sciences; and, under the pretence of fortune-telling, find means to rob or defraud the ignorant and superstitious. To colour their impostures, they artificially discolour their faces, and speak a kind of gibberish or cant peculiar to themselves. They rove up and down the country in large companies, to the great terror of the farmers, from whose geese, turkeys, and fowls, they take considerable contributions. When a fresh recruit is admitted into the fraternity, he is to take the following oath, administered by the principal marauder, after going through the annexed forms:— First, a new name is given to him, by which he is ever after to be called; then standing up in the middle of the assembly, and directing his face to the _dimber damber_, or principal man of the gang, he repeats the following oath, which is dictated to him by some experienced member of the fraternity; namely, “I, Crank Cuffin, do swear to be a true brother, and that I will, in all things, obey the commands of the great tawny prince, and keep his counsel, and not divulge the secrets of my brethren. “I will never leave nor forsake the company, but observe and keep all the times of appointment, either by day or by night, in every place whatever. “I will not teach any one to cant, nor will I disclose any of our mysteries to them.