made thee to differ from another?" And if we answer it as we should, it would furnish us with another reason for the exercise of charity, which will extend to all men.

For if all men are the sons of one common father; if all conditions of life are the appointment of one common master; no man can be reckoned a stranger to us, who is son of the same father, and servant of the same master; however he may, for reasons unknown to us, be placed in a lower condition of life, and called to serve in a meaner station, endowed with less and fewer abilities.

Carry these considerations with you into the world, and view the wants and necessities of the poor; listen to the cries of widows and orphans, to the moans and complaints of those who suffer under the torments of the body or of mind. One duly attentive to these reasons could never fall into the little considerations, whether this man was his countryman or townsman, whether the other was of the same party or opinion with himself; for the great and true reasons on which mercy and charity are founded, exclude all such little respects and relations.- -BISHOP SHERLOCK.

HISTORICAL SURVEY OF GIPSIES.

And the Lord said unto the servant, go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.— LUKE XIV. 23.

To procure information concerning the state of the gipsies in England, Mr. Hoyland* distributed in different parts of the kingdom a circular letter, to which twenty-five queries were subjoined: but the answers have not been sufficiently precise to add much to the knowledge which he had received from other quarters. His attempt to ascertain their numbers has been altogether unsuccessful. The result of what he has learned on this head is merely, that there are about sixty families in Hertfordshire; that in some counties there are not so many; and that in Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Cambridgeshire, they are probably more numerous. Enough, however, appears to expose the extravagance of the assertion, (an assertion reported to have been made, and not to have been contradicted, in the House of

* Author of Historical Survey of the Gipsies, published in 1819.

Commons,) that there are 60,000 gipsies in Great Britain. Supposing every county to contain as many as Hertfordshire, the number in England would be 2,400 families, or 12,000 individuals: but this estimate must exceed the truth considerably, since there are many counties in which scarcely any are to be found. In Elizabeth's reign there are said to have been 10,000 of them in the country. They receive few or no recruits: and from the hardships which they undergo, they can scarcely be supposed to do more than to keep up their numbers. There is, therefore, every probability that, at present, they fall short of that amount rather than exceed it. Mr. Hoyland is certainly guilty of great exaggeration when he estimates them at 18,000.

About three-fourths of them live out of doors in winter as well as in summer: not, however, it would appear, from choice, but from necessity. They who can find shelter in towns, and subsistence while they remain there, very gladly avail themselves of the advantage. Those who ramble in the neighbourhood of the metropolis generally live in London from Michaelmas to April; where they gain a livelihood as knife-grinders, chair-bottomers, wire-workers, tinkers, bellows-menders, rat-catchers, or by selling fruit, fish, or earthenware. Notwithstanding this variety of occupations, they complain of the difficulty of finding employment. They seldom ask alms; the committee of mendicity heard of only one gipsy girl who had been found begging in the streets. They would willingly relinquish their wandering mode of life, and allow their children to be hrought up to regular trades; but they are beset by so many difficulties, that few have an opportunity of following their wishes. Mr. Hoyland mentions a curious instance of one Riley Smith, who was for some time chief of the gipsies in Northamptonshire. He officiated as a vagrant musician, was fortunate enough to marry the cook of a family of distinction, and then rented a farm near Bedford. His agricultural speculations failed, and Smith returned to his original situation.

They profess to be of the national religion; but their notion of religion is confined to repeating the Lord's Prayer, and even this attainment is the honourable distinction of a few. They seldom attend any place of public worship, nor do they seek to impress religious sentiments on the minds of their children. They are very willing that their infants

should be christened, if it can be done without trouble or expense; and in cases were money was plentiful, the marriage ceremony has been performed with due solemnity: but for the most part marriage is merely a mutual pledging of faith, and names are given to their children without calling in the aid of a spiritual instrument. Indifference to all systems of faith and to all ritual observances, is indeed one of the most striking features of the gipsy character throughout the world. They have everywhere attained to Voltaire's standard of perfection-they belong to no religion, but are ready to profess any. In Italy they call themselves good Catholics: in the Protestant states of Germany they are Lutherans: in Russia, Moldavia, and Wallachia, they are votaries of the Greek Church in the dominions of the Grand Seignior, they believe in Mahomet and the Koran. But the Turks seem to entertain some doubt concerning the soundness of their faith; for in the neighbourhood of Constantinople they make them pay the poll-tax, which is imposed upon un

believers.

The ignorance of the gipsies in England is most deplorable. Not one in a thousand can read. They are sensible, however, of the advantages of education: they regret the want of it themselves; they regret still more their inability to procure it for their offspring. They are not only willing that their children should attend schools; they have even in some instances purchased permission to send them thither by paying the regular rate of wages. Mr. Hoyland visited two encampments; one at Higham Ferrers, in Northamptonshire, the other at Chigwell, in Essex. In both he found a sentiment of regret prevailing, that the young were without means of instruction. He likewise mentions several instances, which have occurred in London and its vicinity, of the eagerness of gipsy parents to send their children to places of education. "The great bar," says Sir Walter Scott, "to the benevolent intention of improving their situation, will be the impossibility to convince them that there either is or can be a mode of life preferable, or even equal to their own." Whether this be or be not true of the Scottish gipsy, it certainly does not apply to the tribes that reside in England. They are willing, they are eager to change their mode of life; means and opportunity are all that is wanting.

In such a state of opinion and feeling among them, they

cannot long remain in England a kind of appendage to society rather than a part of it. There is no need of a powerful arm to draw them within the limits of civilized life; they are willing to enter, whenever the door is opened. Legislative interference might do mischief, but could do no good. It is by individuals that the work must be effected. The only thing necessary is, that those who are entrusted with plentiful means of exercising benevolence, and who find themselves in the neighbourhood of gipsy tribes, should aid these wanderers in their attempts to change their migratory life for habits of regular industry. A very trifling assistance will often make the change easy, where it would otherwise be impossible.

ON DOING GOOD FROM PRINCIPLE.

By engaging in the work of doing good to others, we do not by any means sacrifice our own happiness. We often, indeed, give up some of the ordinary means of enjoyment, but we do not sacrifice the end. We secure our own richest, purest enjoyment, though in a new and better way. We change the character of our happiness too; for the pleasures which results from carrying happiness to the hearts of others, is very different in its nature from that which we secure by aiming directly at our own. Now the visitor ought to consider these things, and understand distinctly at the outset, whether he is in such a state of mind and heart that he wishes to pursue the happiness of others, or whether, on the other hand, he means to confine his efforts to the promotion of his own.

One may do good for the sake of the credit or the advantage of it; in which case it is a matter of policy.

He may do good for the sake of the pleasure of it. Here it is a matter of feeling.

He may do good simply for the sake of obeying God, and from the desire to have the good done. In this case it is a matter of principle.

A man may do good for the sake of the credit of it; and this is the secret of a far greater proportion of the apparently benevolent effort which is made in the world, than is generally supposed. I do not by any means say that it is wrong for a man to desire the good opinion of others, and especially to wish to be known as a man of kind feeling for the wants

and sufferings of others, his fellow men. This is probably right. The degree, the extent, to which this operates upon us as a stimulus to effort, is the main point.

Doing good from the impulse of sentimental feeling, is regarded among men as of a higher moral rank, than doing good from policy. Though after all, it might perhaps be a little difficult to assign a substantial reason for the distinction. One of the lowest examples of doing good from mere feeling, is where we make effort to relieve pain, because we cannot bear to see it. A wretched-looking child, with bare feet and half-naked bosom, comes to our door in a cold inclement season of the year. He comes, it may be, to beg for food or clothing. We should perhaps never have thought of making any search in our neighbourhood for objects of suffering, but when such an object obtrudes itself upon us, we cannot bear to send him away with a denial. We give him food or clothing, or perhaps money; but our chief inducement for doing it is to relieve a feeling of uneasiness in our own minds. We do not say that this is wrong. All we say is, that it is not acting from principle. It may be considered a moral excellence that the mind is so constituted in respect to its powers and sympathy with others, that it cannot be happy itself while an object of misery is near, and the happiness of knowing that all around us are happy, may be a kind of enjoyment which it is very proper for us to seek. But still this is doing good from feeling, not from principle.

Feeling will often prompt a benevolent man to make efforts to promote positive enjoyment, as well as to relieve mere suffering which forces itself upon the notice. You “get interested," as the phrase is, in some unhappy widow, perhaps, and her children-a case of destitution and suffering, with which you have become casually acquainted. The circumstances of her case are such, perhaps, as at first to make a strong appeal to your feelings, and after beginning to act in her behalf, you are led on from step to step by the pleasure of doing good, till you have found her regular employment, and relieved all her wants, and provided for the comfort and proper education of her children. All this may be right, but it may be simply feeling, which has prompted it. There may have been no steady principle of benevolence through the whole.

Doing good from principle. There is a far wider differ