The Christian names, if one may so call them, of gipsies are, amongst the men, chiefly Eastern, and what are better understood by us as scriptural; while those of the women, such as Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence, Honesty, etc., are taken as a rule from the virtues which, let us hope, they inherit not only in name.

Their fondness for pets is as remarkable as the names they give them; thus, in one camp, I found a favourite gri (horse) which was called after the murderer Peace; again, a donkey enjoyed the name of Lefroy-the names of malefactors of all kinds applying to an almost inexhaustible range of domestic favourites.

Although, as I have said, they labour hard during many hours of the day to earn the average sum of about 3s., they do not by any means forget that 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy ;' for when they have freshened themselves up at night in their grimy cabins (which are, as a rule, about 14 feet by 10 feet, and sometimes accommodate a large family), they emerge, and often, to the lively strains of the fiddle, concertina, or flute, dance and otherwise enjoy themselves, till late on into the night, especially at fair time, when they are in their glory.

My presence at the death-bed of one of their number (a lovely little child) enables me to testify to their affectionate devotion to each other when sympathy is most needed. The emblem of death with them is a sod of grass, this they put into a saucer of water and place upon the breast of the deceased, a ceremony about the observance of which they are most particular.

With a view to bringing my experiences as closely up to date as possible, I may say that only a few weeks since, when lecturing in Scotland, I heard of a Romany settlement up at Kirk Yetholm, in the Cheviots, which village has always had the reputation of being the capital of the Scotch gipsies Of late years, I find they have to a great extent dispersed, having gone to live elsewhere, owing to intermarriage with the outside world. However, I had the good fortune to meet her majesty the queen in the village, who carried her seventy-five summers lightly enough, and was volubility itself in connection with her royal descent-in fact, she rather astonished me at first by assuring me that King David had been her brother-in-law. I

am not prone to doubt, but I felt that that gipsy family-tree must be rotten somewhere at the roots. She, however, was, I found on further inquiry, perfectly right, the king she claimed relationship to being David Foa Bligh, whose wife Esther succeeded him, and for many years enjoyed a most peaceable and prosperous reign.

On her death, in the common order of things, Prince Richard, her son, should have come into power, but the gipsies one and

QUEEN HELEN.

all refused to be represented by one whose princely life had been spent, to a great extent, in prison, and who had won a more general reputation for petty peccadilloes than princely qualities. I was unfortunate in not being able to interview this Prince Richard, since he was engaged, I understood, at the time of my visit, on urgent private affairs somewhere farther up country.

She who now represented the throne, the sister-in-law of

King David, and whose name in full was Helen Foa Bligh, was, she assured me, the reigning queen of the gipsies. She informed me she preferred living in the old palace-of which I introduce a sketch with the royal mews attached (where she kept her donkey)-to the new palace not far off, where her sister Esther died, but as it was a most unpicturesque cottage, I made no note of it.

The internal arrangements of the old palace were perfection. as far as cleanliness were concerned, a considerable number of books finding space on the old queen's bookshelves. At the one inn, 'The Borderers' Arms,' there was preserved an ancient and very quaintly carved chair, in which the queens of several

generations had from time to time sat; it could hardly be dignified by the name of a throne, however, on this account.

Queen Helen, with whom I afterwards took a walk of some little distance, turned out to be a most entertaining old lady, still hoping to come into untold wealth, left some time since by a gipsy of her name in America, who, having struck oil' and died, has left his pile awaiting the claims of nextof-kin.

By the way, Queen Helen is the second sovereign with whom I have had the honour of taking a stroll; the other having been Queen Elizabeth. Start not, reader; on investigation, it will be found to be as true-as that Queen Helen was sister-in-law to King David. I refer to Queen (then Princess)

Elizabeth of Roumania, who, during the Russo-Turkish war, took me with the kindliest courtesy from ward to ward in her hospital at Bucharest, of which with becoming modesty she was, nevertheless, most justly proud.

Nor have I confined my investigations to the lives alone of the Romany. Dustmen and their doings; their huge dustheaps, and the equally huge fortunes in some cases made out of them, also having claimed my attention. Then, again, a cruise in a canal-boat has now and again revealed to me curious

passages in the lives of our floating population-lives, in their way, quite as distinctive as those of the gipsies.

Life on a monkey-boat-a name given to the smaller kind of barge which is generally used for the conveyance of bricksmay have for the first week or two the charm of novelty; but it is a sadly monotonous one in the long run.

During my peregrinations amongst the bargees and masters of monkey-boats, I made the acquaintance at one of the locks of a most interesting old fellow, of whom I made a sketch which I now publish. Being infinitely better posted up than

most of his fellows, his information was invaluable; besides which, he introduced me to many of his friends, and thus it was that I obtained a sort of entrée into canal society. One of their great difficulties seems to be the education of their children, since, having no fixed abode, they are quite beyond the reach of board and parochial schools.

They pride themselves very much on the cabins they inhabit, which are, as a rule, furnished in their peculiar, kitchen-like way with some taste; while pictures cut out of the illustrated papers cover every available space. Indeed, no one who has not at some time of his life found himself in the cabin of a monkey-boat, would believe what a vast amount of comfort may be condensed into a small space.

Then, again, there are 'fly-boats,' conveyed from place to place by horses, which are changed at short stages, and by means of which they are towed along at a considerable rate. Strangely enough, these same 'fly-boats' derive their name from those used by the Saxon pirates of the sixth and seventh centuries, who much affected our eastern shores, and were renowned for their rapid movements. Ever on the alert to swoop down on their victims, or, if worsted, to make tracks, we are told by Sidonius that these marauders were amongst the most terrible of enemies with whom it was possible to engage.

What changes the intervening centuries have brought about! Pirates are few and far between on the high seas, and the 'fly boat' of to-day takes its peaceable inland course on commerce bent. The conclusion I came to with reference to these traders on our water-ways was, that they were an infinitely better set than people of parallel position to be found in the highways and by-ways of our great cities; and that, while a strong religious sentiment prevailed, they were, curiously enough, as a class, inclined to be very superstitious, believing in signs and omens to no small degree. Nor is this so much to be wondered at, considering the long hours they spend at night gliding silently from lock to lock.

To attempt to describe the many curious communities amongst whom I have been thrown whilst in quest of material for my pencil, I should take you up creeks, by-ways, and back streets, round about the docks, to thieves' kitchens, and other unclean corners in this great capital, and to all sorts of out-of