rope composed of beautiful ideas is not the thing to save drowning Gipsy children. To put artificially-coloured feathers upon the head of a Gipsy child dressed in rags and shreds, with his body literally teeming with vermin and filth, will not make him presentable at court or a fit subject for a drawing-room. To dress the Satanic, demon-looking face of a Gipsy with the violet-powder of imagery only temporally hides from view the repulsive aspect of his features. The first storm of persecution brings him out again in his true colour. The forked light of imagination thrown across the heavens on a dark night is not the best to reveal the character of a Gipsy and set him upon the highways for usefulness and heaven. The dramatist has strutted the Gipsy across the stage in various characters in his endeavour to improve his condition. After the fine colours have been doffed, music finished, applause ceased, curtain dropped, and scene ended, he has been a black, swarthy, idle, thieving, lying, blackguard of a Gipsy still. Applause, fine colours, and dazzling lights have not altered his nature. Bad he is, and bad he will remain, unless we follow out the advice of the good old book, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Would to God the voice of the little Gipsy girl would begin to ring in our ears, when she spoke with finger pointed and tears in her eyes:— “There is a cabin half-way down the cliff, You see it from this arch-stone; there we live, And there you’ll find my mother. Poverty Weeps on the woven rushes, and long grass Rent from the hollows is our only bed. I have no father here; he ran away; Perhaps he’s dead, perhaps he’s living yet, And may come back again and kiss his child; For every day, and morn, and even star, I pray for him with face upturned to heaven, ‘O blessed Saviour, send my father home!’”