least to a rational comprehension of a real Gipsy mind.  During my life it has been my fortune to become intimate with men who were “absolutely” or “positively” free-thinkers—­men who had, by long study and mere logic, completely freed themselves from any mental tie whatever.  Such men are rare; it requires an enormous amount of intellectual culture, an unlimited expenditure of pains in the metaphysical hot-bed, and tremendous self-confidence to produce them—­I mean “the real article.”  Among the most thorough of these, a man on whom utter and entire freedom of thought sat easily and unconsciously, was a certain German doctor of philosophy named P—–.  To him God and all things were simply ideas of development.  The last remark which I can recall from him was “Ja, ja.  We advanced Hegelians agree exactly on the whole with the Materialists.”  Now, to my mind, nothing seems more natural than that, when sitting entire days talking with an old Gipsy, no one rises so frequently from the past before me as Mr P—–.  To him all religion represented a portion of the vast mass of frozen, petrified developments, which simply impede the march of intelligent minds; to my Rommany friend, it is one of the thousand inventions of gorgio life, which, like policemen, are simply obstacles to Gipsies in the search of a living, and could he have grasped the circumstances of the case, he would doubtless have replied “Avali, we Gipsies agree on the whole exactly with Mr P—–.”  Extremes meet.

One Sunday an old Gipsy was assuring me, with a great appearance of piety, that on that day she neither told fortunes nor worked at any kind of labour—­in fact, she kept it altogether correctly.

“Avali, dye,” I replied.  “Do you know what the Gipsies in Germany say became of their church?”

“Kek,” answered the old lady.  “No.  What is it?”

“They say that the Gipsies’ church was made of pork, and the dogs ate it.”

Long, loud, and joyously affirmative was the peal of laughter with which the Gipsies welcomed this characteristic story.

So far as research and the analogy of living tribes of the same race can establish a fact, it would seem that the Gipsies were, previous to their quitting India, not people of high caste, but wandering Pariahs, outcasts, foes to the Brahmins, and unbelievers.  All the Pariahs are not free-thinkers, but in India, the Church, as in Italy, loses no time in making of all detected free-thinkers Pariahs.  Thus we are told, in the introduction to the English translation of that very curious book, “The Tales of the Gooroo Simple,” which should be read by every scholar, that all the true literature of the country—­that which has life, and freedom, and humour—­comes from the Pariahs.  And was it different in those days, when Rabelais, and Von Hutten, and Giordano Bruno were, in their wise, Pariahs and Gipsies, roving from city to city, often wanting bread and dreading fire, but asking for nothing but freedom?