her hopeful grandson, who had "a gift for preaching" as well as
for many other things not exactly compatible with holy orders.
He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd,
knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk
like Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could "do
nothin' at exhortin' without a white handkercher on his neck
and money in his pocket,"--a fact going far to confirm the
opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the Puseyites generally,
that there can be no priest without tithes and surplice.

These people have for several generations lived distinct from
the great mass of the community, like the gypsies of Europe,
whom in many respects they closely resemble. They have the
same settled aversion to labor and the same disposition to avail
themselves of the fruits of the industry of others. They love a
wild, out-of-door life, sing songs, tell fortunes, and have an
instinctive hatred of "missionaries and cold water." It has been
said--I know not upon what grounds--that their ancestors were
indeed a veritable importation of English gypsyhood; but if so,
they have undoubtedly lost a good deal of the picturesque
charm of its unhoused and free condition. I very much fear that
my friend Mary Russell Mitford,--sweetest of England's rural
painters,--who has a poet's eye for the fine points in gypsy
character, would scarcely allow their claims to fraternity with
her own vagrant friends, whose camp-fires welcomed her to her
new home at Swallowfield.(1)
(1) See in Miss Mitford's *Our Village.*

"The proper study of mankind is man;" and, according to my
view, no phase of our common humanity is altogether