The Squire, who, as I have observed, has a private good-will towards gipsies, has suffered considerable annoyance on their account.  Not that they requite his indulgence with ingratitude, for they do not depredate very flagrantly on his estate; but because their pilferings and misdeeds occasion loud murmurs in the village.  I can readily understand the old gentleman’s humour on this point; I have a great toleration for all kinds of vagrant sunshiny existence, and must confess I take a pleasure in observing the ways of gipsies.  The English, who are accustomed to them from childhood, and often suffer from their petty depredations, consider them as mere nuisances; but I have been very much struck with their peculiarities.  I like to behold their clear olive complexions, their romantic black eyes, their raven locks, their lithe, slender figures; and hear them in low silver tones dealing forth magnificent promises of honours and estates, of world’s wealth, and ladies’ love.

Their mode of life, too, has something in it very fanciful and picturesque.  They are the free denizens of nature, and maintain a primitive independence, in spite of law and gospel; of county gaols and country magistrates.  It is curious to see this obstinate adherence to the wild, unsettled habits of savage life transmitted from generation to generation, and preserved in the midst of one of the most cultivated, populous, and systematic countries in the world.  They are totally distinct from the busy, thrifty people about them.  They seem to be, like the Indians of America, either above or below the ordinary cares and anxieties of mankind.  Heedless of power, of honours, of wealth; and indifferent to the fluctuations of times; the rise or fall of grain, or stock, or empires, they seem to laugh at the tolling, fretting world around them, and to live according to the philosophy of the old song: 

  “Who would ambition shun,
  And loves to lie i’ the sun,
  Seeking the food he eats,
  And pleased with what he gets,
  Come hither, come hither, come hither;
      Here shall he see
      No enemy,
  But winter and rough weather.”

In this way, they wander from county to county; keeping about the purlieus of villages, or in plenteous neighbourhoods, where there are fat farms and rich country-seats.  Their encampments are generally made in some beautiful spot—­either a green shady nook of a road; or on the border of a common, under a sheltering hedge; or on the skirts of a fine spreading wood.  They are always to be found lurking about fairs, and races, and rustic gatherings, wherever there is pleasure, and throng, and idleness.  They are the oracles of milk-maids and simple serving-girls; and sometimes have even the honour of perusing the white hands of gentlemen’s daughters, when rambling about their fathers’ grounds.  They are the bane of good housewives and thrifty farmers, and odious in the eyes of country justices; but, like all other vagabond beings, they have something to commend them to the fancy.  They are among the last traces, in these matter-of-fact days, of the motley population of former times; and are whimsically associated in my mind with fairies and witches, Robin Goodfellow, Robin Hood, and the other fantastical personages of poetry.