At that time—with the exception of Borrow and the late Sir Richard Burton—the only man of letters with whom I had been brought into contact who knew anything about the gipsies was Tom Taylor, whose picture of Romany life in an anonymous story called ‘Gypsy Experiences,’ which appeared in _The Illustrated London News_ in 1851, and in his play ‘Sir Roger de Coverley,’ is not only fascinating, but on the whole true. By-the-by, this charming play might be revived now that there is a revived interest in Romany matters. George Meredith’s wonderful ‘Kiomi’ was a picture, I think, of the only Romany chi he knew; but genius such as his needs little straw for the making of bricks. The letter I received from Groome enclosed a ragged and well-worn cutting from a forgotten anonymous _Athenæum_ article of mine, written as far back as 1877, in which I showed acquaintance with gipsydom and described the ascent of Snowdon in the company of Sinfi Lovell, which was afterwards removed bodily to ‘Aylwin.’ Here is the cutting:— “We had a striking instance of this some years ago, when crossing Snowdon from Capel Curig, one morning, with a friend. She was not what is technically called a lady, yet she was both tall and, in her way, handsome, and was far more clever than many of those who might look down upon her; for her speculative and her practical abilities were equally remarkable: besides being the first palmist of her time, she had the reputation of being able to make more clothes-pegs in an hour, and sell more, than any other woman in England. The splendour of that ‘Snowdon sunrise’ was such as we can say, from much experience, can only be seen about once in a lifetime, and could never be given by any pen or pencil. ‘You don’t seem to enjoy it a bit,’ was the irritated remark we could not help making to our friend, who stood quite silent and apparently deaf to the rhapsodies in which we had been indulging, as we both stood looking at the peaks, or rather at the vast masses of billowy vapours enveloping them, as they sometimes boiled and sometimes blazed, shaking, whenever the sun struck one and then another, from amethyst to vermilion, ‘shot’ now and then with gold. ‘Don’t injiy it, don’t I?’ said she, removing her pipe. ‘_You_ injiy talking about it, _I_ injiy lettin’ it soak in.’”