Respecting fortune telling, with which the female Gipseys impose on people’s credulity, in every district and corner of Europe, little need be said. Yet it is extraordinary, that _women_, generally too not till they become old, should be so sharpsighted as to discover, in every person’s hand they are permitted to inspect, the events of futurity! There are some instances of men being thus gifted; but so few, that they are only exceptions to a general rule. It is, therefore, to be ascribed to the Gipsey women alone, that faith in divination still exists in the minds of millions of people. It is true, Europe was not originally beholden to the Gipseys for this faith, it being deeply rooted in the ignorance of the middle age, when they arrived and brought it with them also. The science of divination here, was already brought to a much greater degree of perfection than among them: rules were invented to tell lies from the inspection of the hand; whereas these poor wretches were esteemed mere bunglers. During the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century the Gipseys were considered as only a supernumerary party; there being men of great learning, who not only read lectures in college on the divine art of chiromancy, but wrote many books, vilifying these people, and endeavouring to spoil their market by exposing their ignorance. But those enlightened men are no more; their knowledge is deposited in the dead archives of literature: and probably, if there were no Gipseys, with them would also have died the belief in chiromancy, as has happened in regard to astrology, necromancy, oneirocritica, and the other offsprings of imbecile fancy. By the Gipseys alone will this deceit be kept alive, till every Gipsey is constrained to acknowledge some country, and to have some ostensible mode of gaining a livelihood. We can only pity the poor weak deluded beings, who pay their groschen or kreutzer, their shilling or sixpence, for a few unmeaning words!—as if it were possible for people to instruct us concerning our future fortune in life, who are ignorant of their own; being unable to determine whether a day or two hence, they may still be telling fortunes, or be taken before the magistrates, and hanged for theft.