learned individuals, particularly Grellmann, Richardson, and

Marsden, induced them to collect many words of the Romanian
language, as spoken in Germany, Hungary, and England, which, upon

analysing, they discovered to be in general either pure Sanscrit or
Hindustani words, or modifications thereof; these investigations

have been continued to the present time by men of equal curiosity
and no less erudition, the result of which has been the

establishment of the fact, that the Gypsies of those countries are
the descendants of a tribe of Hindus who for some particular reason

had abandoned their native country. In England, of late, the
Gypsies have excited particular attention; but a desire far more

noble and laudable than mere antiquarian curiosity has given rise
to it, namely, the desire of propagating the glory of Christ

amongst those who know Him not, and of saving souls from the jaws
of the infernal wolf. It is, however, with the Gypsies of Spain,

and not with those of England and other countries, that we are now
occupied, and we shall merely mention the latter so far as they may

serve to elucidate the case of the Gitanos, their brethren by blood
and language. Spain for many centuries has been the country of

error; she has mistaken stern and savagetyranny for rational
government; base, low, and grovelling superstition for clear,

bright, and soul-ennobling religion; sordid cheating she has
considered as the path to riches; vexatious persecution as the path

to power; and the consequence has been, that she is now poor and
powerless, a pagan amongst the pagans, with a dozen kings, and with

none. Can we be surprised, therefore, that, mistaken in policy,
religion, and moral conduct, she should have fallen into error on

points so naturally dark and mysterious as the history and origin
of those remarkable people whom for the last four hundred years she

has supported under the name of Gitanos? The idea entertained at
the present day in Spain respecting this race is, that they are the

descendants of the Moriscos who remained in Spain, wandering about
amongst the mountains and wildernesses, after the expulsion of the

great body of the nation from the country in the time of Philip the
Third, and that they form a distinct body, entirely unconnected

with the wandering tribes known in other countries by the names of
Bohemians, Gypsies, etc. This, like all unfounded opinions, of

course originated in ignorance, which is always ready to have
recourse to conjecture and guesswork, in preference to travelling

through the long, mountainous, and stony road of patient
investigation; it is, however, an error far more absurd and more

destitute of tenable grounds than the ancient belief that the
Gitanos were Egyptians, which they themselves have always professed

to be, and which the original written documents which they brought
with them on their first arrival in Western Europe, and which bore

the signature of the king of Bohemia, expressly stated them to be.
The only clue to arrive at any certaintyrespecting their origin,

is the language which they still speak amongst themselves; but
before we can avail ourselves of the evidence of this language, it

will be necessary to make a few remarks respecting the principal
languages and dialects of that immense tract of country, peopled by

at least eighty millions of human beings, generally known by the
name of Hindustan, two Persian words tantamount to the land of Ind,

or, the land watered by the river Indus.
The most celebrated of these languages is the Sanskrida, or, as it

is known in Europe, the Sanscrit, which is the language of religion
of all those nations amongst whom the faith of Brahma has been

adopted; but though the language of religion, by which we mean the
tongue in which the religious books of the Brahmanic sect were

originally written and are still preserved, it has long since
ceased to be a spoken language; indeed, history is silent as to any

period when it was a language in common use amongst any of the
various tribes of the Hindus; its knowledge, as far as reading and

writing it went, having been entirely confined to the priests of
Brahma, or Brahmans, until within the last half-century, when the

British, having subjugated the whole of Hindustan, caused it to be
openly taught in the colleges which they established for the

instruction of their youth in the languages of the country. Though
sufficiently difficult to acquire, principally" target="_blank" title="ad.主要地；大体上">principally on account of its

prodigious richness in synonyms, it is no longer a sealed language,
- its laws, structure, and vocabulary being sufficiently well known

by means of numerous elementary works, adapted to facilitate its
study. It has been considered by famous philologists as the mother

not only of all the languages of Asia, but of all others in the
world. So wild and preposterous an idea, however, only serves to

prove that a devotion to philology, whose principal object should
be the expansion of the mind by the various treasures of learning

and wisdom which it can unlock, sometimes only tends to its
bewilderment, by causing it to embrace shadows for reality. The

most that can be allowed, in reason, to the Sanscrit is that it is
the mother of a certain class or family of languages, for example,

those spoken in Hindustan, with which most of the European, whether
of the Sclavonian, Gothic, or Celtic stock, have some connection.

True it is that in this case we know not how to dispose of the
ancient Zend, the mother of the modern Persian, the language in

which were written those writings generally attributed to
Zerduscht, or Zoroaster, whose affinity to the said tongues is as

easily established as that of the Sanscrit, and which, in respect
to antiquity, may well dispute the palm with its Indian rival.

Avoiding, however, the discussion of this point, we shall content
ourselves with observing, that closely connected with the Sanscrit,

if not derived from it, are the Bengali, the high Hindustani, or
grand popular language of Hindustan, generally used by the learned

in their intercourse and writings, the languages of Multan,
Guzerat, and other provinces, without mentioning the mixed dialect

called Mongolian Hindustani, a corrupt jargon of Persian, Turkish,
Arabic, and Hindu words, first used by the Mongols, after the

conquest, in their intercourse with the natives. Many of the
principal languages of Asia are totally unconnected with the

Sanscrit, both in words and grammaticalstructure; these are mostly
of the great Tartar family, at the head of which there is good

reason for placing the Chinese and Tibetian.
Bearing the same analogy to the Sanscrit tongue as the Indian

dialects specified above, we find the Rommany, or speech of the
Roma, or Zincali, as they style themselves, known in England and

Spain as Gypsies and Gitanos. This speech, wherever it is spoken,
is, in all principal points, one and the same, though more or less

corrupted by foreign words, picked up in the various countries to
which those who use it have penetrated. One remarkable feature

must not be passed over without notice, namely, the very
considerable number of Sclavonic words, which are to be found

embedded within it, whether it be spoken in Spain or Germany, in
England or Italy; from which circumstance we are led to the

conclusion, that these people, in their way from the East,
travelled in one large compact body, and that their route lay

through some region where the Sclavonian language, or a dialect
thereof, was spoken. This region I have no hesitation in asserting

to have been Bulgaria, where they probably tarried for a
considerable period, as nomad herdsmen, and where numbers of them

are still to be found at the present day. Besides the many
Sclavonian words in the Gypsy tongue, another curious feature

attracts the attention of the philologist - an equal or still
greater quantity of terms from the modern Greek; indeed, we have

full warranty for assuming that at one period the Spanish section,
if not the rest of the Gypsy nation, understood the Greek language

well, and that, besides their own Indian dialect, they occasionally
used it for considerablyupwards of a century subsequent to their

arrival, as amongst the Gitanos there were individuals to whom it
was intelligible so late as the year 1540.

Where this knowledge was obtained it is difficult to say, - perhaps
in Bulgaria, where two-thirds of the population profess the Greek

religion, or rather in Romania, where the Romaic is generally
understood; that they DID understand the Romaic in 1540, we gather

from a very remarkable work, called EL ESTUDIOSO CORTESANO, written
by Lorenzo Palmireno: this learned and highly extraordinary

individual was by birth a Valencian, and died about 1580; he was
professor at various universities - of rhetoric at Valencia, of