the most patient poodle. Such is the use of these shears; the abuse is to "snip Busné noses" (vol. i. p. 227). The professors, besides clipping and snipping, are adepts in the lucrative arts of horse-stealing, dealing and doctoring: they form the veterinary practitioners of Spain. They provide themselves with patients by secreting in mangers a poisonous mixture called Dras,—a thing which has occurred at Newmarket. They possess the antidote to this bane, and can cure the diseases which they inoculate, which some medical men in some other countries cannot. In Spain, by the way, the two most fatal disorders are a coup-de-soleil and a doctor. Mr. Borrow details many ingenious methods by which the Spanish jockeys manage to do the Mr. Greens of the peninsula. We shall not reveal these dangerous secrets: sufficient for English stables is the evil thereof; and we lament to say that our author has come to this melancholy conclusion, that the greatest rogue who ever figged, chanted, or bishoped in Spain, is a mere infant when compared to the full-grown sublimity of rascality of an English leg:

"Hic niger est; hunc tu Romane caveto."

These honest earnings of the males are trifling compared to the ill-gotten gains of the women, whether old or young, hideous or lovely. When in the hag state they sell a vegetable decoction to produce abortion; this they call la raiz del buen baron, the root of the good baron, meaning thereby, says our author, "his satanic majesty, on whom this root is very appropriately fathered." Mr. Borrow, when it was shown to him, thought that it was parsley. This botany is at variance with that of English old women, who connect parsley-beds rather with the fecundative and fructifying principle than with the preventive. This peninsular variety may possibly have been lost in England, when the convent gardens of monks, our first herbalists and green-grocers, were suppressed.

Another item in the gipsy budget is the revenue derived from curing the effects of the evil eye, el mal de ojo. This dread of a too fascinating glance is both oriental and classical. Solomon was afraid of it; Jews and gipsies believe in it and shudder; the Andalucians share it with the Neapolitans, those grand preservers of pagan absurdities; a look of ad

miration from a stranger is no compliment; Spaniards have learnt from experience that anything coveted by those who are armed with power is very soon laid hold of. The habit of offering everything that is admired, esta muy a la disposicion de vm., arises from the wish of making a virtue of a necessity. The gipsies profess to neutralise this evil eye; the process is termed querelar nasula. Mr. Borrow devotes his ninth chapter, and a very curious one it is, to the Jewish and Moorish notions of this bane and its antidote. In Andalucia amulets are worn like lightning-conductors, to disarm an electric eye: "Small horns, tipped with silver, are frequently attached to "the children's necks by means of a cord braided from the "hair of a black mare's tail. Should the evil glance be cast, "it is imagined that the horn receives it, and instantly snaps "asunder." (Vol. i. p. 147.)

The Neapolitan cornicelle are therefore made of coral, which is a peculiarly brittle substance. The superstition is pagan, and the specific is phallic; the evil eye is repelled by presenting an object of insult or defiance, a something on the "non admirari" or antagonist principle. An amulet has been derived ab amolire, from crushing, the killing effect of the evil eye, which was represented under the myth of Medusa's head. The Gitána is of course an adept in the vulgar arts of shoplifting, ustilar pastesas, of palmistry, of fortune-telling, penar la bahí, or penaw dukkerin in the English dialect. These witches cannot prophesy unless their hands are previously crossed with some precious metal; silver, and gold even better, operates galvanically in chiromancy, just as a brass band assists the efficacy of Cheltenham waters. The gipsies make their fortunes by telling those of other people, so the monks of St. Francis grow rich by their vow of poverty. Promises are the only capital required in this trade; the art consists in their proper adaptation to the age and wants of the applicants; the sure baits are handsome lovers to virgins, second husbands to widows, and red gold to the aged man or woman. For these purposes these female tongues are taught rhetoric and enormous lying from the cradle. This organ is not to be trifled with in its most uneducated, unsophisticated state. Mr. Hunter never could determine within some hundreds by how many pairs of muscles it was moved; when its speech is

properly cultivated to conceal thought, a bewitching gipsy will outtalk and take in the Old Serpent himself. "Mention me," says Mr. Borrow, warming on the subject," a point of devilry with which that woman is not acquainted.”

She has always the right word on the tip of her organ: she is no more restrained by a sense of shame than a special pleader impudent and brazen-faced, she must live by her wits; this strengthens her cerebral lobes, as carrying sedanchairs does Irish legs. She has the good fortune to be always out of hard work. It is this treadmill routine of having some base mechanical daily work, which stupefies the divine particle of operatives, who are therefore called so many hands, not heads. With the Gitanos, these workers in iniquity, c'est la tête qui travaille; if they can only get that in, the rest of their bodies will follow, sure as death, into poorhouse or palace, pauperum tabernas, regumque turres.

Mr. Borrow gives an instance of royal wheedling. It chanced that the son of Pepita, the husband of Chicharona, was sent to the galleys for having "spirited away a horse." His female relatives determined to obtain an

"interview with the Queen Regent Christina, whom they doubted not would forthwith pardon the culprit, provided they had an opportunity of assailing her with their gipsy discourse; for, to use their own words, 'they well knew what to say.' I at that time lived close by the palace, in the street of Santiago, and daily, for the space of a month, saw them bending their steps in that direction. One day they came to me in a great hurry, with a strange expression on both their countenances. We have seen Christina, hijo' [my son], said Pepita to me. Within the palace?' I inquired. Within the palace, O child of my garlochin' [heart, hijo de mi corazon], answered the sibyl: Christina at last saw and sent for us, as I knew she would; I told her bahi,' 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 bahi to die Queen of France and Spain, and to be loved much and hated much.' And did you not dread her anger when Dread her, the Busnee?' screamed Pepita: Ino, 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

you told her these things?'

came away she gave me this baria of gold, and to Chicharona this other, so at all events we have hokkanoed the queen. May an evil end overtake her body, the Busnee!'"- Vol. i. p. 318.

Mr. Borrow knows the gipsies too well to vouch for this or for any of their sayings. It shows, however, the sort of things which happen in Spain; they would never have dared to impose on the son of their heart, of whose "rum" intelligence they were well aware, with anything grossly improbable. Access to the Spanish sovereigns was always easy to the humblest. Thus, while our liberal press was likening Ferdinand the Beloved to Nero, Rehoboam and the tiger in the Zoological Garden, the corpulent despot was toddling about without keepers or guards in the Buen Retiro, or good-humouredly receiving with his royal hand the petitions for reform jobs, etc., from his oppressed subjects, to which, like a true father of his people, he never attended, Carajo! es mucho rey! “He is indeed a great king!" said they. His then faithful spouse, and now disconsolate widow, Christina, with all her private virtues, is but a weak, " shallow, changing woman,” and exactly the no-character who would resort and give credit to gipsy fortune-tellers.

The female gipsies are chalanes, that is, itinerant dealers and brokeresses; they penetrate into the Spanish harems, on pretence of selling articles of female dress, and thus convey billets-doux, contraband cottons and cutlery from Gibraltar, obscene objects and prints from France. Whenever there is a chance they practise the hok-kano baro, the great trick-the discovery of hidden treasure. The dupe is persuaded to conceal money or plate in a secret spot, over which efficacious incantations are muttered; the deposit must not be looked at for a stated period, during which the sorceress takes care to carry it off, and then attributes its disappearance to the impatience of the victim, whose curiosity alone dispelled the charm by infringing the conditions. This trick is generally played on their own sex, for Spanish women cannot keep a secret, not even their own. It is a sure card. Mammon is the god of Spain. "Rem, quocunque modo rem." Spaniards hate hard work, which is not so easy anywhere; they dislike earning bread by the sweat of their brow, for excessive perspiration is particularly disagreeable in their hot climate.

There are plenty of lost treasures in Spain, and not a few who wish to find them: the desire for sudden acquisition of wealth, by accident, is very oriental and peninsular: the Spaniards are all now mining mad. The expectation of finding hidden treasure is by no means unreasonable in countries where there are no savings-banks, no accountants-general, where every man distrusts his neighbour, and fears to be thought to have spare cash, knowing how soon he will be eased; disposable property is invested in jewels, in gold, and is condensed into shapes which take little room, and make less show, en lo que no habla. Where property and person are insecure, where civil and foreign wars and domestic treason are rife, prudent housekeepers will hoard,--the where they never reveal to the wife of their bosoms or to their eldest sons. Many die and make no sign; their secret, and, what is worse, their cash, is lost to their distressed families.

The women make money by the exhibition of the Romalis, their peculiar dance; there is always some notorious hag who will get up a funcion, a function, as dancing and assembling is called in Spain, for those Busné who will pay. It is impossible to describe this capering; it is the unchanged ballet of the improba Gaditane of the profligate ancients. Gades was then what Paris is now, the purveyor of obscenity. This Romalis tallies in the minutest details, actions, gestures, instruments of music, and encouraging applause of the fathers, mothers and brothers, with the Bætican performances, which have been described by Horace, Martial, and Petronius Arbiter. The dance is indubitably oriental: it is akin to the Hindostanee Nautch, to the Egyptian Ghawasee. It was brought into Andalucia by the Phoenicians by a southern route, and now, phoenix-like, has re-appeared in the same province, imported from the East by the Zincali by a northern road. The two streams have met in Seville; the quality of the climate must be favourable. Few dances have travelled more, or are more deserving the notice of the antiquarian traveller.

The gipsies practise the Romalis at their own weddings. Mr. Borrow gives a graphic scene of one of these outbreaks of extravagance. (Vol. i. p. 343.) The wedding festivals generally ruin the happy pair, who spend during the three first