It may be said that the gypsy has no nationality, and can therefore have no national music. This is hardly true. The gypsy has no country, but his sentiment of nationality is strong and persistent, and his music is as peculiar as his language and customs. It is true that he steals the music of the country in which he sojourns just as readily as he steals the poultry from the roost or the linen from the line, but he always imparts to it some echo of his far Eastern home and some flavor of the tent and the hedgerow. Twice in my life this fact has struck me in a remarkable manner. Once, on the skirts of a pine forest in the wilds of Argyleshire, I came suddenly on a gypsy-camp celebrating a wedding. The women were dancing the "Romalis" to a violin and tambourine. The music, the dance, the conical tents, the flashing swarthy faces, the careless piquant dresses, were all so Oriental in character that in spite of the mountains, the moors and the heather I found it hard to realize that I was in the heart of Scotland. Even when the most distinctive Scotch pibrochs were played I was quite conscious of an Eastern clash in them which no Scot could or would have given. Again: eighteen months ago I found a camp of English gypsies in the Rocky Mountains a little beyond Golden. One man was leaning against a tree fiddling negro melodies to the birds, but negro melodies with the flavor of the tent instead of the cabin. At my request he played "Yankee Doodle," and imparted to it a revolutionary dash, a piquant mocking defiance, which convinced me that he knew its history and was interpreting it from his own heart--a fact which a subsequent conversation confirmed. I often wonder that no musical speculator has ever organized a band of Russian, Hungarian and English gypsies. Certainly, it would give us a far more characteristic entertainment than bands of blackened "minstrels." The Swiss love their national music as they love their mountains and their freedom; and at first sight it seems singular that a people so blended with the progress of liberty should possess a music singularly simple and pastoral. But in this fact we perceive how truly music explains character, for as early as the fourteenth century their political faith, like their mode of life, was simple and averse to display. In a few ordinary words the deputies of Appenzell said all that has since been said with infinite bombast: "We are convinced that mankind are born for order, but not for servitude--that they must have magistrates whom they themselves elect, but not masters to grovel under." The essentials of true freedom having thus early become an every-day enjoyment, a people so plain and simple sang naturally melodies suggestive of the calm pastoral life so dear to them. [Illustration: SWISS SONG.]