Both men and women are finely formed, but are exceedingly dirty in their habits and appearance. They acknowledge no particular religion; nor do they think of following the precepts of any, unless compelled. Their chief occupation, in their vagrant life, is the making of iron tools, baskets, and other cheap articles. They attend wine-houses and taverns, and are sometimes called to the houses of noblemen when a concert is to be given; as many of them play rudely on various concert instruments. When the public works are to be constructed, the Government gipsies, who are acquainted with masonry, are called in to assist the labourers, receiving food and no wages, and are, in other respects, treated like cattle. I have, for the present, confined myself principally to the humbler classes of the Moldavians. I shall, in my next _prattle_, inform my young readers of the Wallachians, and of the country of Wallachia, which the Great Russian Bear wants to steal. [Illustration] Something about the Old Abbeys and Castles of England. [Illustration] We give in the above engraving a view of the rains of an Old Monastery, and as it suggests a train of ideas, pertaining to bye-gone ages, I must give my young friends the benefit of them. What about Monasteries? I should like to hear something about them—for wherever we travel we come to ruins of some kind or other, most of which are of Old Castles, or Old Monasteries, and therefore I should like to know more about them. This is what many of my young readers would say, and upon this “would say”—I join issue. Monasteries are buildings to which people retired when they were tired of the world, or when they were unfortunate, or when they were wicked—and sometimes when they were good. The inclination to a monastic life arose with the corruptions of society, and with the dangers in which every body shared in the strifes, feuds, and wars of the dark ages. Those well-disposed persons who found it difficult to resist the corruptions of the times, sought in solitude a protection against temptation; and that fondness for contemplation, so curious in Eastern parts of the world, gave rise to the most ancient oriental philosophy, and also to that peculiar sanctity to which those who retired from the world often attained. To this was added the opinion, that, transgressions may be best atoned for by abstinence from all the pleasures of life, and from all society with men. And thus, according to an early notion popular througout the East, the Deity might be appeased. Anchorites, hermits, recluses, and monks are therefore found in the anti-christian times of Asiatic antiquity, and are also still prevalent in India and other parts of the Orient.