It is truly appalling to think that over seven hundred thousand sharp, clever, well-formed human beings, and with plenty of muscular power, have, as I have said before, been roaming about Europe for many centuries with no object before them, and accomplishing nothing. Something like ten millions of Gipsies have been born, lived, died, and gone into the other world since they set foot upon European soil, and what have they done? what work have they accomplished? Alas! alas! worse than a cipher might be written against them. They have lived in the midst of beauty, songsters, romance, and fiction, and they have been surrounded by everything that would help to call forth natural energy, mechanical skill, and ability, but they have been in some senses like children playing in the street gutters. They have the elements of success within them, but no one has taken them by the hand to put them upon the first step, at any rate, so far as England is concerned. It is grievous to think that not one of these ten millions of Gipsies who have gone the way of all flesh has written a book, painted a painting, composed any poetry, worth calling poetry, produced a minister worthy of much note—at least, I can only hear of one or two. They have fine voices as a rule, and except some half-dozen Gipsies no first-rate musicians have sprung from their midst. No engineer, no mechanic—in fact, no nothing. The highest state of their manufacturing skill has been to make a few slippers for the feet, as some of them are doing at Lynn; skewers to stick into meat, for which they have done nothing towards feeding; pegs to hang out other people’s linen, some tinkering, chair-bottoming, knife-grinding, and a little light smith work, and a few have made a little money by horse-dealing. There are others clever at “making shifts” and roadside tents, and will put up with almost anything rather than put forth much energy. Since the Gipsies landed in this country more than one hundred and fifty thousand have been born, principally, as they say, “under the hedge bottom,” lived, and died. They are gone “and their works do follow them.” Their present degraded condition in this country may be laid upon our backs.