the Gipseys entertain in regard to religion, that although a Jew, by becoming a Mahometan, is freed from the payment of the charadsch, the Gipseys are not, at least in the neighbourhood of Constantinople. They are compelled to pay this polltax even though their ancestors, for centuries back, had been Mahometans; or though they should actually have been a pilgrimage to Mecca: the privilege of wearing a white turban is the only advantage their conversion gives them over unbelieving Jews and Gipseys. Such is the respect paid by the Gipseys to moral institutions, in every country where they are found. It is true that in this, as well as in other things, there may be exceptions, but they are very rare; by much the greatest part of them are as above described. Wherefore the more ancient, as well as the more modern, writers agree, in positively denying that the Gipseys have any religion; placing them even below the heathens. This sentence cannot be contradicted; since, so far from having a respect for religion, they are adverse to every thing which in the least relates to it. CHAPTER XII. _Their Language_, _Sciences_, _and Arts_. BESIDES that the Gipseys understand and speak the language of the country where they live, they have a general language of their own, in which they always converse with each other. Writers differ in opinion concerning this language, being undecided whether it be really that of any country, and who are the people from whom it originates. Some pronounce it a mere jargon, others say it is gibberish. We can by no means agree with the supporters of the first opinion, as the only ground for the assertion is barely, that they do not know any other language correspondent to that of the Gipseys. But they do not seem to have considered how extravagant a surmise it is, to believe a whole language an invention; that too of people rude, uncivilised, and hundreds of miles distant from each other. This opinion is too absurd to employ more time to controvert it. Neither can the Gipsey language be admitted for gibberish; unless by those who know nothing of the former, or are totally ignorant of the latter, which is corrupt German; whereas the former has neither German words, inflexions, nor the least affinity in sound. No German, were he to listen a whole day to a Gipsey conversation, would comprehend a single expression. A third party allow that the language of the original Gipseys was really vernacular, and that of some country; but assert it to be so disguised and falsified, partly by design of the Gipseys themselves, partly by adventitious events, through length of time, and the continual wandering of these people, that it is entirely new formed, and now used by the Gipseys only. This opinion contains much truth; but carries the matter too far, in not allowing that any traces remain to prove any particular dialect to be the Gipseys’ mother tongue. Perhaps the great Büsching means the same thing, when he says, “the Gipsey