Note 16 — MR. LELAND ON THE GIPSIES. [11a]

It is not only puzzling, but provoking to decide how to treat a writer like Mr. Leland, for sometimes he shows a great deal of knowledge of his subject, and sometimes apparently nothing of it—one assertion contradicting another on the same question. What in reality has an antipathy between birds, or the idea of “people of self-conscious culture and the man and factory,” or the destiny of the American Indians to do with the destiny of the Gipsies? For he says, “Gipsies in England are passing away as rapidly as Indians in North America” (The English Gipsies, Pref. X.). As a native of the United States, Mr. Leland must know that these Indians become extinct, and of the Gipsies in England that although there are comparatively few “dwellers in tents” of full blood, so called, there are many, many thousands of more or less mixed blood following various callings, or in various positions in life, as he has frequently admitted. The distinction between “old-fashioned” Gipsies and other members of the tribe is but trifling with the subject.