which the writer has shown familiarity with the _real_ life, habits, or
language of the vast majority of that very large class, the itinerants of
the roads. Mr Dickens has set before us Cheap Jacks, and a number of men
who were, in their very face, of the class of which I speak; but I cannot
recall in his writings any indication that he knew that these men had a
singular secret life with their _confreres_, or that they could speak a
strange language; for we may well call that language strange which is, in
the main, Sanscrit, with many Persian words intermingled. Mr Dickens,
however, did not pretend, as some have done, to specially treat of
Gipsies, and he made no affectation of a knowledge of any mysteries. He
simply reflected popular life as he saw it. But there are many novels
and tales, old and new, devoted to setting forth Rommany life and
conversation, which are as much like the originals as a Pastor Fido is
like a common shepherd. One novel which I once read, is so full of "the
dark blood," that it might almost be called a gipsy novel. The hero is a
gipsy; he lives among his kind--the book is full of them; and yet, with
all due respect to its author, who is one of the most gifted and best-
informed romance writers of the century, I must declare that, from
beginning to end, there is not in the novel the slightest indication of
any real and familiar knowledge of gipsies. Again, to put thieves' slang
into the mouths of gipsies, as their natural and habitual language, has
been so much the custom, from Sir Walter Scott to the present day, that
readers are sometimes gravely assured in good faith that this jargon is
pure Rommany. But this is an old error in England, since the vocabulary
of cant appended to the "English Rogue," published in 1680, was long
believed to be Gipsy; and Captain Grose, the antiquary, who should have
known better, speaks with the same ignorance.

It is, indeed, strange to see learned and shrewd writers, who pride
themselves on truthfully depicting every element of European life, and