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magical properties which they hold to be inherent in the Bar Lachi, or loadstone, is almost the only indication of any faith in supernatural influencés. Some, indeed, pay external respect to the symbols of Christianity but La Tuerta whom we regard as the beau-ideal of a Gitána, openly professed to the author her disbelief in a Supreme Being. If I go to church, said she, it is but to spit at the images. 1 spat at the bulto (statue) of Maria this morning, and I love the Corojai (Moors) and the Londoné (English) because they are not baptized!-It may be asked, whether the author, whose mission to Spain was directly connected with the distribution of the Scriptures, made no efforts for the conversion or improvement of his adopted brethren? Zeal on his part was certainly not wanting; he succeeded in translating a considerable part of the New Testament into their tongue, now and then procuring the assistance of some of them in improving his version; but their only motive seems to have been surprise at finding that the language could be written or read; and the printed copies were valued only as charms, which, like the Bar-Lachi, would preserve them from danger on their thieving expeditions! The attempt at addressing a Gitáno congregation by personal exhortations, was even more ludicrously unsuccessful, and reminds the reader of the well-meant efforts of Dr. Primrose in the jail :-« When I had concluded, I looked around me. The features of the assembly were twisted, and the eyes of all turned upon me with a frightful squint not an individual present but squinted — the genteel Papa, the good-humoured Chicharona, the Casdami, &c., &c.-all squinted. The gipsy fellow, the contriver of the burla (trick,) squinted worst of all. Such are gipsies!».

With this naïve account of his promising penitents, we must take leave of Mr. Borrow and his entertaining pages, recommending to the attention of etymologists, the extensive collection of gipsy rhymes, and the copious vocabulary of their language, which occupies the greater part of the second volume. If the details of gipsy life here depicted, present, as he candidly admits, «little that is edifying in a moral or a Christian point of view, they are certainly more novel and interesting

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than three-fourths of the books of travels which crowd our libraries; and have afforded the Busné a better insight than they have ever yet enjoyed, into the feelings and customs of a remarkable people, the previous information respecting whom might have been pretty nearly summed up in the report made by an honest East-India captain, on the savage inhabitants of a group of islands he had been sent to survey-ReligionApparently none. Manners None. Customs-Not fit to be

described.

(BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.)

THE DUCK VICTIM,

A SPORTING LEGEND OF THE PONTINE MARSHES.

BY ARTHUR VANSITTART, ESQRE.

(The English Turfite in Italy.").

«Et quos pestifera Pontini uligine campi,
Qua Saturæ nebulosa palus restagnat, et atro
Liventes cœno per squalida turbidus arva
Cogit aquas Ufens, atque inficit æquora limo.»
SILIUS ITALICUS. Lib. VIII. 1. 379.

Feasting and revelry were at their height, in the saloons of the embassy at Rome. Convwes from various climes were congregated around the minister's generous board, which groaned beneath the costliest offerings of earth and ocean.

Among those who were bidden to the feast was a Frenchman, deservedly considered one of the master spirits of our age; a man whose pencil has achieved him an imperishable fame, and who stands alone and unapproachable in the delineation of those scenes of glory, of which the history of his native country furnishes so many, and such bright examples.

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It was my care to secure a seat next to him at table for frequent communion had ripened into intimacy, an acquaintanceship of no recent date.

VOL. I.

21

The chef de cuisine of his excellency, celebrated even among the Cordons Bleus of the highest renown in European courts, this day not only fully sustained his reputation, but even out-heroded Herod in devising a carte» abundant in all things that are accounted rarest and most exquisite.

« By the shield of Minerva (1), you are to blame, » I exclaimed, perceiving that my talented neighbour shook his head mournfully, and waved away, with a very perceptible shudder of abhorrence, a most delicate salmi de canard sauvage, languishing in a rich brown sauce, which was proffered to his acceptance by one of the tribe of gilded popinjays who flitted to and fro. « A more exquisite salmi was never devised. I marvel much whence his excellency procures his truffles. These, revelling in racy Chambertin, are not of Italia's soil, I swear, but must rather claim descent from the sunny beech-woods of fair Provence, or smiling Languedoc.. « Restrain your enthusiasm, he said. It is neither from caprice, nor from the whim of the moment, that my antipathy to wild ducks springs; but from the recollections of severe and bitter experience. I abhor," added he with decided, but whimsical energy, I abhor the very name of a wild-duck! I have had duck enough, to embitter the remainder of my days, should I even attain unto the good old age of Methusalem. »

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"I comprehend perfectly," said I, et premit altum corde dolorem. You have fallen into the clutches of some ruthless barbarian, who martyrizes his friends with the atrocious compounds and concotions of a female cook. Luke-warm water into which greasy plates have been hastily plunged for ablution, ushered in as soup; fish in the last stage of corruption; bad mutton and worse calf's-head; and for the second course, two effigies worthy of an auto da fe, branded as roasted ducks. » A truce to your jesting," said he, hastily interrupting

The famous dish known as the shield of Minerva, which conferred upon Vitellius, the proverbial gourmand of antiquity, the reputation of being the master cook of his age-was composed of the livers of a thousand young eel-pouts, the brains of as many pheasants, the soft roes of as many lampreys, and a variety of other ingredients, too numerous to be particularised.

me, ten thousand times worse than that was the calamity that befel me."

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"Worse than that! nay then, to the protection of the gods do I commend thee, for commiseration is but an empty name. » I was in company,» said he, with some three or four of your compatriots, who had but lately returned from a sporting expedition into the Pontine Marshes. They boasted much of their wonderful success; vaunted not a little the hecatombs of game which they had immolated; extolled the address, and eulogised the attentions of Il Grand Cacciatore di Sua Santità Il Papa, at whose excellent hostelrie they were quar¬ tered; and with exaggerated representations of their feats, and recitals of their achievements, they so inflamed my imagination, that my curiosity was excited, and ardour aroused, to essay the delights of la grande chasse.»

"And what sport had you? exclaimed a young Attaché on leave of absence from a northern mission, who bored all his acquaintance to death by flavouring every sentence he uttered with a Latin quotation. »

Sport, pardieu! what had been sport to others was but death to me. »

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Auribus teneo lupum: you caught a Tartar, I opine. » The only Tartar that I caught, he replied, " was emetic of tartar, and a Maremma ague to boot. As soon as my plans were matured, and my arrangements effected, I started in my britchka to post some fifty miles over abominable roads, and through execrable marshes, exhaling malaria, rheumatism, putrid fevers, and every malady that flesh is heir to. "

Umbris nigrantibus horrens,

Et formidatus volucri lethale vomebat
Suffuso virus cœlo.»

exclaimed the Attaché.

After some hours travelling, continued the Frenchman, « a sudden turn in the road revealed a miserable and gloomylooking hovel perched on the banks of a pool of stagnant water. Eccola! eccola! la locanda! eccelenza! yelled forth

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