PLUMBERS, and even politicians, think meanly of Gypsies. The _Oxford English Dictionary_, apparently regarding them as a species of vermin rather than a nation, denies them the barren honour which it awards to Gallovidians, and spells their name with a little _g_. As an old witch complained to Lavengro, some very respectable persons go so far as to “grudge the poor people the speech they talk among themselves,” and, like the magistrate, brand it “no language at all, merely a made-up gibberish.” Mrs. Herne very properly retorted, with an ironical curtsey: “Oh, bless your wisdom, you can tell us what our language is without understanding it”; for to learn to understand Romani is a far easier task than to trace it to its sources. The central mystery of a mysterious race, it is their greatest treasure, whether, with Borrow, we regard it as a means “to enable habitual breakers of the law to carry on their consultations with more secrecy,” or share the enthusiasm of scholars who have found in it the most fascinating, yet most baffling, problem of linguistics. On the language of the Gypsies one of the greatest philologists wrote two volumes, containing more than a thousand closely-printed pages, although he confessed he had never heard it spoken; another devoted eight years to the gradual publication of a huge quarto which, when completed, weighed nearly a hundred ounces; and countless humbler contributors have added their stones to the cairn of learning under which Romani lies buried. All believed that in this unwritten tongue, the conversational currency of “the most unfortunate and degraded of beings,” lay hid answers to riddles which have perplexed the learned for five hundred years: Where was the original home of the Gypsies? When did they leave it? By what route did they reach Europe? But the hopes of scholars have been grievously disappointed, and at the end of a century of diligent gleaning and scientific analysis the mystery of Gypsy origin is as deep as it was at the beginning!