Part IV. Gipsy Life in a Variety of Aspects. [Picture: A Gipsy’s van near Notting Hill, Latimer Road] In Part III. I have endeavoured, as well as I have been able, to show some of the agencies that have been set in motion during the last three centuries for and against the Gipsies, with a view to their extermination, by the hang-man, to their being reclaimed by the religious zeal and fervour of the minister, and to their improvement by the artificial means of poetry, fiction, and romance. First, the persecution dealt out to the Gipsies in this, as well as other countries, during a period of several centuries, although to a large extent brought upon themselves by their horrible system of lying and deception, neither exterminated them nor improved their habits; but, on the contrary, they increased and spread like mushrooms; the oftener they were trampled upon the more they seemed to thrive; the more they were hated, hunted, and driven into hiding-places the oftener these sly, fortune-telling, lying foxes would be seen sneaking across our path, ready to grab our chickens and young turkeys as opportunities presented themselves. Second, that when stern justice said “it is enough,” persecution hanging down its hands and revenge drooping her head, a few noble-hearted men, filled with missionary zeal, took up the cause of the Gipsies for a period of nearly forty years in various forms and ways at the end of the last and the commencement of the present century. Except in a few isolated cases, they also failed in producing any noticeable change in either the moral, social, or religious condition of the Gipsies, and with the death of Hoyland, Borrow, Crabb, Roberts, and others, died the last flicker of a flickering light that was to lead these poor, deluded, benighted heathen wanderers upon a road to usefulness, honesty, uprightness, and industry. Third, that on the decline of religious zeal, fervour, and philanthropy on behalf of the Gipsies more than forty years ago the spasmodic efforts of poets, novelists, and dramatists, in a variety of forms of fiction and romance, came to the front, to lead them to the goal through a lot of questionable by-lanes, queer places, and artificial lights, the result being that these melodramatic personages have left the Gipsies in a more pitiable condition than they were before they took up their cause, although they, in doing so, put “two faces under one hat,” blessing and cursing, smiling and frowning, all in one breath, praising their faults and sins, and damning their _few_ virtues. In fact, to such a degree have fiction writers painted the black side of a Gipsy’s life, habits, and character in glowing colours that, to take another 20,000 men, women, and children out of our back slums and sink-gutters and write the word “Gipsy” upon their back, instead of “scamp,” and send them through the country with a few donkeys, some long sticks, old blankets and rags, dark