on the road before reaching Lüneburg. There, however, the Gipsies certainly are first heard of, and henceforth history has plenty to say about their doings. From Lüneburg they went to Hamburg, Lübeck, Rostock, Griefswald, travelling in an easterly direction. They are mentioned as having appeared in Saxony, where they were driven away, as at Lüneburg, for their thievish propensities. They travelled through Switzerland, headed by their great Duke Michael, and pretending to have been expelled from Egypt by the Turks, Their story in these early years, though it varied in particulars, remained the same in essentials. {1621} In Provence they called themselves Saracens; in Swabia they were Egyptians doomed to everlasting wanderings for having refused hospitality to the Virgin and Joseph; at Bâle, where they exhibited letters of safe conduct from the Pope, they were also Egyptians. Always the Land of the Nile; always the same pretence, or it may be reminiscence, of sojourn in Egypt; always, to soothe the suspicions of priests, faithful and submissive sons of the Church. From the very first their real character was apparent. They lie, cheat, and steal at Lüneburg; they lie and steal everywhere; they tell fortunes and cut purses, they buy and sell horses, they poison pigs, they rob and plunder, they wander and they will not work. They first came to Paris in the year 1427, when more people went to see them, we are told, than ever crowded to the Fair of Laudet. … They remained at St. Denis for a month, when they received peremptory orders to quit for the usual reason. … In the 16th century trouble began for the Roman folk. By this time their character was perfectly well known. They were called Bohemians, Heathen, Gitanos, Pharaohites, Robbers, Tartars, and Zigeuner. They had abandoned the old lying story of the penitential wanderings; they were outcasts; their hand was against every man's hand; their customs were the same then as they are described now by Leland or Borrow." _Gipsies and their Friends (Temple Bar, volume 47), pages 65-67._