the style rude and unpolished: he has, nevertheless, permitted the
tree to remain where he felled it, having, indeed, subsequently
enjoyed too little leisure to make much effectual alteration.

At the same time he flatters himself that the work is not destitute
of certain qualifications to entitle it to approbation. The
author's acquaintance with the Gypsy race in general dates from a
very early period of his life, which considerably facilitated his
intercourse with the Peninsular portion, to the elucidation of
whose history and character the present volumes are more
particularly devoted. Whatever he has asserted, is less the result
of reading than of close observation, he having long since come to
the conclusion that the Gypsies are not a people to be studied in
books, or at least in such books as he believes have hitherto been
written concerning them.

Throughout he has dealt more in facts than in theories, of which he
is in general no friend. True it is, that no race in the world
affords, in many points, a more extensive field for theory and
conjecture than the Gypsies, who are certainly a very mysterious
people come from some distant land, no mortal knows why, and who
made their first appearance in Europe at a dark period, when events
were not so accurately recorded as at the present time.

But if he has avoided as much as possible touching upon subjects
which must always, to a certain extent, remain shrouded in
obscurity; for example, the, original state and condition of the
Gypsies, and the causes which first brought them into Europe; he
has stated what they are at the present day, what he knows them to
be from a close scrutiny of their ways and habits, for which,