“Shall we gather at the river, Where bright angels’ feet have trod, With its crystal tide for ever Flowing by the throne of God? Yes, we’ll gather at the river, The beautiful, the beautiful river, That flows by the throne of God. “Soon we’ll reach the silvery river, Soon our pilgrimage will cease, Soon our happy hearts will quiver, With the melody of peace. Yes, we’ll gather at the river, The beautiful, the beautiful river, That flows by the throne of God.” It has frequently been stated that the Gipsies never allow their poor to go into the union workhouses; this statement is both erroneous, false, and misleading. Clayton, a Gipsy, at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, told me only the other day that he knew an old Gipsy woman who was living in the Melton Mowbray Union Workhouse at the present time, and mentioned some others who had died in the union, a few connected with his own family. Abraham Smith, a respectable and an old Christian Gipsy, mentioned the names of a dozen or more Gipsies of his acquaintance who had died in the union workhouse, some in the Biggleswade Union, of the name of Shaw. There was a time when there was a little repugnance to the union, but this feeling has died out, thus adding another proof that the Gipsies, in many respects, are not so good as what they were fifty years or more ago; and this fact, to my mind, calls loudly for Government interference as regards the education of the children. Abraham Smith also further stated that nearly all the old people belonging to one family of S--- had died in the workhouse in Bedfordshire. Another thing has forced itself upon my attention, viz., that there seems to be a number of poor unfortunate idiots among them. I know, for a fact, of one family where there are two poor creatures, one of whom is in the asylum, and of another family where there is one, and a number in various parts where they are semi-idiotic, and only next door to the asylum. These painful facts will plainly show to all Christian-thinking men and women, and to others who love their country and seeks its welfare, that the time has arrived for the Gipsies to be taken hold of in a plain, practical, common-sense manner by those at the helm of affairs, and placed in such a position as to help themselves to some of the blessings we are in possession of ourselves. During all my inquiries, when the Gipsies have not fallen in with all I have said with reference to Gipsy life, they have all agreed without exception to the plan I have sketched out for the education of their children and the registration of their tents, &c.