their bronzed and naked bodies, illuminated by the flame, appear at night like demons; while the cave, with its flinty sides, and uneven roof, blackened by the charcoal vapours which hover about it in festoons, seems to offer no inadequate representation of fabled purgatory. Another of their favorite haunts is the Triana, a suburb of Seville, noted as early as the days of Cervantes as the resort of contrabandists, robbers, and bad characters of all sorts; and here is the grand focus of the trade in English goods, smuggled over the lines from Gibraltar, in which many of the Gitános are principal agents.

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But the gipsy men in Spain, as in England and other lands, are but vulgar and mechanical knaves, when compared with the calees or women, the tales of whose subtlety and adroitness in despoiling the Busné, fill many a page in the present work. I have known a Gitána (said Paco, above mentioned,) gain twenty ounces of gold by means of the hokkano baro in a few hours; while the silly gipsy, her husband, would be toiling with his shears for a fortnight, trimming the horses of the Busné, and yet not be a dollar richer at the end of the time. To them is committed the task of beguiling, by soft speeches, and insidious flattery, the wives and daughters of the Busné, and of practising on their credulity by the lying predictions of chiromancy. The baji or good fortune promised on these occasions differs little in its main ingredients from that told by the roadside wanderers of England: lovers and husbands for young maidens, and for wives, perhaps, not seldom a second brilliant marriage after the death of a detested partner. Another glittering boon with which the eyes of the dupes are occasionally dazzled, is the hope of discovering some of those hidden treasures which are popularly believed to have been concealed all over Spain, under the guardianship of occult talismans, by the departing Moors. This last sort of mystification comes more properly, however, under the head of the hokkano baro noticed above, and is usually performed (as we now and then hear of it in this country) by prevailing on the victim to deposit money or articles of value in a retired spot, with certain forms of cabalistic cere

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mony, on the assurance that after a given period the offering will be found doubled or indefinitely augmented by the spirits of the earth, compelled by the potency of the gipsy charm to resign the hoards committed to their custody. The execution of this «great trick is of course somewhat hazardous, requiring dexterous management of the defrauded party, and a favourable concurrence of external circumstances; but the self-possession and ingenuity of the clever calee are almost infinite, and the plundered Busnee is often soothed into a belief that her own impatience and want of faith are the true causes of the disappearance of the dollars and gold ounces which have been spirited away by the Gitána. Numerous are the minor sources of revenue known to this industrious sisterhood one of the most productive is ustilar à pastesas, (a Romany phrase implying the purloining change from a shop-counter) and in this useful accomplishment an amiable acquaintance of the author, Aurora by name, was so distinguished a proficient as to have often, while receiving change for a gold ounce, stolen the whole value, amounting to sixteen dollars. The sale of philtres, charms, and noxious drugs, constitutes another branch of their profits; but all these pursuits are subordinate to the grand trade of fortune-telling, in which the Gitánas stand alone and unrivalled. It is on this pretext that they gain the entrée of the palace of the grandee, and the humble dwelling of the artizan, scrutinizing the localities, and laying plans for future depredations and rarely is a door inexorably shut against them. It is the boast, indeed, of the skilful calees, that there is no house, however exalted the inmates, into which they cannot contrive to make their way and one of the anecdotes recorded by our author proves, that even the abode and presence of royalty is not always free from the intrusion of these swarthy sibyls. The performers on this occasion were Pepita and La Chicharona, two notorious Gitanas of Madrid; and the son of the former (who was La Chicharona's husband,) having got into trouble about a horse, and been condemned to ten year's imprisonment and hard labour at Malaga, they determined, if possible, to obtain an interview with the queen-regent Christina, and

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gain a remission of the sentence by their gipsy palaver, knowing well» (as they themselves said) what to say!» For a month they haunted the environs of the palace without success-but the conclusion must be given in their own words. One day they came to me in a great hurry, with a strange expression on both their countenances. We have seen Christina, my son', said Pepita to me. Within the palace?' I enquired. Within the palace, O child of my garlochin', (heart,) answered the Sybil; Christina at last saw and sent for us, as I knew she would; I told her baji, and Chicharona danced the Romalis (gipsy dance) before her',-What did you tell her?' 'I told her many things,' said the hag, 'many things which I need not tell you; know however, that amongst other things, I told her that the chabori (little queen) would die, and then she would be queen of Spain. I told her, moreover, that within three years she would marry the son of the King of France, and it was her baji to die Queen of France and Spain, and to be beloved much, and hated much.'-'And did you not dread her anger, when you told her these things? Dread her, the Busnee!' screamed Pepita; 'no my child, she dreaded me far more; I looked at her so and raised my finger so- and Chicharona clapped her hands, and the Busnee believed all I said, and was afraid of me; and then I asked for the pardon of my son, and she pledged her word to see into the matter, and when we came away she gave me this baria of gold, and Chicharona this other, so at all events we have hokkano'ed the queen. May an evil end overtake her body, the Busnee!' » The land of her present sojourn may yet give Christina cause to remember part of this prediction, though the appointed time for its fulfilment is already past, as the interview took place in 1837.

Chicharona and Pepita, with the two daughters of the latter, (known by the engaging sobriquets of La Tuerta the one-eyed, and La Casdami, the scorpion, ») fill a considerable space in the sketches of Gitano manners and conversation, and appear to have been very highly finished specimens of the race. La Tuerta had even carried her zeal for the spo

liation of the Busné so far as to assume the dress and arms of a man, and rob on the road as a salteador or high-wayman, relating with infinite gusto the atrocities she had assisted in this capacity to commit. None of the male Gitános appear, indeed, to have carried out the principles and practice of Gitánismo to the same extent as this accomplished damsel, who verily is represented as having been, like the amiable mother of the Caliph Vathek, as wicked and unscrupulous as a woman could be, which is not saying a little; for the sex pique themselves on their superiority in every competition. » But if the females among the Gitános are pre-eminent in that malignity and almost fiendish hatred of all human beings not belonging to their own blood, which might almost be supposed to indicate a closer affinity to the ghouls and evil genii of eastern fiction, than to the great family of the children of Adam-in that sex is also most conspicuous that one redeeming virtue of chastity and conjugal fidelity, which stands them instead of both law and religion, and to which they adhere more pertinaciously than any other race on the face of the globe (). From this sacred pledge is derived their national appellation of Roma, or husbands and wives; and so strictly is its inviolability instilled from infancy into their minds, that a faux-pas with a Busno is almost unknown in, the traditions of Gitánismo, and the few instances on record were invariably followed by the disappearance of the culprit, who atoned for the loss of her lacho (2), or honour, by death from the knives or cachas of her tribe.

If the fiancée be pronounced unblemished in the ordeal, the nuptials are suffered to proceed; and the whole property of the bridegroom is not unfrequently consumed in the three days of mad revel with which the event is celebrated, and during which both Zincali and Busné are welcomed with equal

() This is not peculiar to the Spanish Gitànas, but is the universal law of the race, wherever the people of Roma have wandered, a writer on the English gipsies says- «The mutual attachment subsisting hetween the nominal husband and his wife is so sincere, that instances of infidelity on either side occur but seldom; and when otherwise; the parties are deemed very wicked by the gipsies themselves,»

() We give this important word as spelled by Mr. Borrow-by the English and Russian gipsies it is sounded ladja.

and indiscriminate hospitality. Infidelity in after life on the part of the woman is almost unknown, even with those of her own tribe, or when their husbands have been separated from them, (as not unfrequently happens,) by banishment to the presidios, or penal garrisons in Africa; and when placed in isolated situations, apart from the surveillance of their tribe, they display no less firmness in repelling the advances made them. Yet these same women, paragons of chastity as they are in their own persons, make no scruple of aiding (for hire) the intrigues of the Busné, as procuresses and go-betweens; and their songs and dances, both in their own festivals and in their exhibitions before Spanish spectators, are as licentious as those of the most abandoned of the Egyptian dancing-girls. Whence then arises this extraordinary care, (contrary to what too frequently prevails in civilized communities,) to preserve the substance of virtue, when they are utterly careless about its appearance? Mr. Borrow does not attempt to unravel this enigma; but we cannot help suspecting that it is in some way connected with their Eastern origin, and may be traced, however remotely, to the observance of caste, and the prohibitions of the Hindoo law against the intermixture of races. (1) We throw this out, however, merely as a hint, leaving it to be worked out by abler Orientalists than ourselves..

But if this veneration for the lacha be in truth a relic of the faith held by the Roma in past times, and in their eastern father-land, it must be admitted, that with the exception of the indistinct and shadowy ideas of the metempsychosis, to which we have previously alluded, it is the only vestige they have retained of either that religious creed or any other. No tribe or nation on the face of the earth, seems to be so utterly destitute of even the outward form or profession of any kind of worship or belief the very superstitions, by means of which they impose on their dupes, they do not themselves place credence in; and a sort of mysterious reverence for the

(') Their care to preserve the purity of their race, might in itself have confuled the unfounded charge so often brought against them, of stealing children, and bringing them up as gipsies. It is indeed prima facie absurd, that a needy wandering race should burden themselves with such a useless incumbrance.