“The woman laughed as she spoke; but there was a kindly tone in her voice and a pitying look in her bright eyes that went straight to my heart. Many a time since, in life, when the storm has indeed been boisterous and the wings so weary, have I thought of those words of encouragement, ‘The time will come—beat on.’ . . . “‘Thou shalt be a “De Rohan,” my darling, and I can promise thee no brighter lot—broad acres, and blessings from the poor, and horses, and wealth, and honours. And the sword shall spare thee, and the battle turn aside to let thee pass. And thou shalt wed a fair bride with dark eyes and a queenly brow; but beware of St. Hubert’s Day. Birth and burial, birth and burial—beware of St. Hubert’s Day.’” Disraeli, speaking of the Gipsies in his “Venetia,” says:—“As Cadurcis approached he observed some low tents, and in a few minutes he was in the centre of an encampment of Gipsies. He was for a moment somewhat dismayed, for he had been brought up with the usual terror of these wild people; nevertheless he was not unequal to the occasion. He was surrounded in an instant, but only with women and children, for Gipsy men never immediately appear. They smiled with their bright eyes, and the flashes of the watch-fire threw a lurid glare over their dark and flashing countenances; they held out their practised hands; they uttered unintelligible, but not unfriendly sounds.” Matilda Betham Edwards, in her remarks upon Gipsies, says:—“Your pulses are quickened to Gipsy pitch, you are ready to make love or war, to heal and slay, to wander to the world’s end, to be outlawed and hunted down, to dare and do anything for the sake of the sweet, untramelled life of the tent, the bright blue sky, the mountain air, the free savagedom, the joyous dance, the passionate friendship, the fiery love.” I come now to notice what a few of the poets have said about these ignorant, nomadic tribes, who have been skulking and flitting about in our midst, since the days of Borrow, Roberts, Hoyland, and Crabb—a period of over forty years. “He grows, like the young oak, healthy and broad, With no home but the forest, no bed but the sward; Half-naked he wades in the limpid stream, Or dances about in the scorching beam. The dazzling glare of the banquet sheen Hath never fallen on him I ween, But fragments are spread, and the wood pine piled, And sweet is the meal of the Gipsy child.”—ELIZA COOK.