modest and distinguished, M. Vaillant, author of a history of the _Rom-Muni_ or Bohemians, some of whose pages we have cited, gives no more flattering portrait, though he ascribes to the gipsies great importance in the sacerdotal history of the ancient world. He recounts how these strange Protestants of primitive civilisation, travelling through the ages with a malediction on their foreheads and rapine in their hands, excited curiosity at first, then mistrust, finally proscription and hatred on the part of mediæval Christians. It will be readily understood what dangers might attach to this people without a fatherland, parasites or the whole world and citizens of nowhere. They were Bedouins who perambulated empires like deserts; they were nomadic thieves who glided about everywhere and remained nowhere. It came to pass speedily that the people regarded them as sorcerers, even as demons, casters of lots, stealers of children, and there was some ground for all this. Moreover, the nomads began to be accused everywhere of celebrating frightful mysteries in secret; they were held responsible for all unknown murders, for all mysterious abductions, as the Greeks of Damascus accused the Jews of killing one of their fraternity and drinking his blood. It was affirmed that they preferred boys and girls from twelve to fifteen years old. Here was an effectual way to insure that they should be held in horror and avoided by the young; but it was odious all the same, for the child and the common people are only too credulous, while as fear begets hatred, so also it tends to breed persecution. It was this which came to pass; they were not only avoided and fled from, but they were refused fire and water; Europe became like India in their respect and every Christian was a Brahman armed against them. In some countries, if a young girl approached one of them to give alms out of charity, her distracted governess would warn her to beware, for the gipsy was a _katkaon_, an ogre, who would suck her blood when she was asleep in the night. The girl drew back trembling. If a boy passed near enough for his shadow to fall on the wall near which they were seated, and where perhaps a whole gipsy family was eating or basking in the sun, his master would cry: “Keep off, child; these vampires will steal your shadow and your soul will dance at their Sabbath through all eternity.” So did Christian hatred resuscitate the _lemures_ and goblins, the vampires and ogres as a ground of their impeachment. “They were descended from Mambres, whose miracles competed against those of Moses; they were sent by the king of Egypt to spy everywhere on the children of Israel and render their lot intolerable; they were the murderers made use of by Herod to exterminate the first-born of Bethlehem; they were pagans indeed, for others, but they did not understand a single word of Egyptian, their language comprising, on the contrary, a good deal of Hebrew, and they