“This singular race, so strange as to resemble no other—possessing neither country, history, religion, nor any sort of codex—seems only to continue to exist because it does not choose to cease to be, and only cares to exist such as it has always been. [Illustration: GYPSY TYPE.] “Instruction, authority, persuasion, and persecution have alike been powerless to reform, modify, or exterminate the gypsies. Broken up into wandering tribes and hordes, roving hither and thither as chance or fancy directs, without means of communication, and mostly ignoring one another’s existence, they nevertheless betray their common relationship by unmistakable signs—the self-same type of feature, the same language, the identical habits and customs. “With a senseless or sublime contempt for whatever binds or hampers, the Tziganes ask nothing from the earth but life, and preserve their individuality from constant intercourse with nature, as well as by absolute indifference to all those not belonging to their race, with whom they commune only as far as requisite for obtaining the common necessities of life. “Like the Jews they have natural taste and ability for fraud; but, unlike them, it is without systematic hatred or malice. Hatred and revenge are with them only personal and accidental feelings, never premeditated ones. Harmless when their immediate wants are satisfied, they are incapable of preconceived intention of injuring, only wishing to preserve a freedom akin to that of the wild horse of the plains, and not comprehending how any one can prefer a roof, be it ever so fine, to the shelter of the forest canopy. “Authority, rules, laws, principles, duties, and obligations are alike incomprehensible ideas to this singular race—partly from indolence of spirit, partly from indifference to the evils engendered by their irregular mode of life.