boards see him frequently, but as a spy and a reprover. He comes to defeat their jobs, and restrain their extravagance: he procures, perhaps, the dismissal of an incompetent schoolmasterthe chairman's protegé-and the retention of an auditor obnoxious from his vigilance. In the greater part of the unions, where the views of different guardians differ, each party appeals to the assistant commissioner. He is bound to give his opinion, and those to whom it is unfavourable accuse him of being the tool of a party. We believe that if an enquiry were made into the state of the unions and parishes which have petitioned against the assistant commissioners, the places which have denounced them as useless, would be found to be precisely those in which their services were most essential.

We have now performed our undertaking, so far as our limits have allowed us. We have shown that the English Poor Laws may be divided into three classes; the first extending from the middle of the reign of Edward III. to the end of that of Elizabeth; the second from the death of Elizabeth to the middle of the last century; and the third from the middle of the last century, to the 15th of August 1834, the date of the Poor Law Amendment Act. We have shown that during the first period the Poor Laws were only parts of a systematic attempt to bring back villanage, and confine the labourers to their parishes, and force them to work there for such wages as their superiors thought fit; and that this attempt failed. We have shown that during the second period the object was the relief of the impotent, the able-bodied being considered subject to the provisions, not of the poor laws, but of the vagrant laws; and that during this period the law appears to have been successful. We have shown that during the third period an attempt was made to give to the labourer a security incompatible with his freedom; to provide for him and his family a comfortable subsistence at his own home, whatever were his conduct, and whatever were the value of his labour. And we have shown that this attempt succeeded in what have been called the pauperized districts, and placed the labourer in the condition, physically and morally, of a slave ;-confined to his parish, maintained according to his wants, not to the value of his services, restrained from misconduct by no fear of loss, and therefore stimulated to activity and industry by no hope of reward. We have stated the principal provisions of the Poor Law Amendment Act, by which this fatal system was corrected; we have stated the mode in which that act has operated, the obstacles by which it has been impeded, and the principal dangers to which it is exposed. On a future occasion we hope to recur to the subject, and to state the improvements of which we believe the act to be capable.

With respect to the works which we have mentioned at the head of this article, the nine volumes published by the poor law commissioners give full statements of the proceedings of the commission, and of their results; the reports and evidence of the Lords and Commons, contain elaborate investigations of all the complaints which had then been made of the law, and the decisions as to those complaints of the Committees of the two houses. The pamphlet by a guardian relates, more fully than is to be found elsewhere, the history of the Poor Law Amendment Act; and contains a detailed examination of the principal alterations which were proposed when the bill for prolonging the commission was pending in the late House of Commons.

Mr Sandby's pamphlet is an admirable illustration of one branch of the subject-the conduct to be expected from guardians when left to their own discretion.

We have carefully avoided allusions to the poor law administration of Ireland or Scotland. In Ireland the act is only beginning to be tried. Our own law has indeed endured for centuries; but we have not thought it right to treat so grave a subject incidentally, or indeed without being able to give to it an undivided attention. We have it fully in view to do so at a convenient season. Let us, meanwhile, repeat the warning with which we set out. Our Scottish countrymen must not treat the English poor law as res inter alios acta. Already we have been told that our system, though it was good while we were agriculturists, requires to be modified now we are manufacturers. Already the assimilation of the law in the two countries has been suggested. If sound principles are maintained by the Imperial Parliament, we shall have the benefit of them; but if the unhappy doctrine prevail, that the poor are benefited in proportion as they are made the objects of parochial relief—if all restrictions on the distribution of relief are treated as tyranny, and all conditions imposed on the recipients as inhumanity-no conviction that we may ourselves feel as to the excellence of our institutions will enable us to preserve them. It is the duty, therefore, of every Scotchman who values the industry and the morals of his country, and especially of every Scotch representative in either house of Parliament, to watch narrowly the proceedings on the English Poor Law Amendment Act; to endeavour to improve that truly great measure, wherever it can safely be improved; and to resist perseveringly, whatever be the temptations to concession, every attempt to diminish its efficiency.

ART. II.-The Zincali; or, an Account of the Gypsies of Spain. By GEORGE BORROW, late Agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Spain. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1841.

THI

HIS is a strange book, of which the greatest part, as the author tells us, was written under very peculiar circumstances; ' at very considerable intervals, during a period of nearly five years passed in Spain-in moments snatched from more im'portant pursuits-chiefly in ventas and posadas, while wandering through the country in the arduous and unthankful task of distributing the gospel among its children.' However arduous and unthankful the task may be, we strongly suspect that these objections are pretty fully compensated, to some tempers, by the zest of the vagrant and delightfully precarious life which it imposes. The part of agent of a Bible Society must furnish more opportunities of romance and adventure than are lightly to be encountered in the prosaic world of modern times. Wanderers from land to land, they have to learn the language and manners of every class of society. When persecuted in one city, they must escape to the next; when out of favour with the authorities, they must retire for shelter under the roof of the peasant; when unpopular with the mob, they must try to ingratiate themselves with those in power;-like Voltaire's prophets, one day fêted and caressed, and well cudgeled the next. All this apostle-being, as Mr Carlyle might call it, has two sides:-it is, no doubt, very heroic, and self-denying, and martyr-like; on the other hand, it must be confessed that it has something not a little picturesque, and attractive to the roving spirit of man: particularly in days when persecution rarely waxes hot, and giant Pope seldom exerts himself even so far as to gnash his teeth at the pert pilgrims who venture within arms' length of him; while giant Pagan is sunk into a poor credulous monster-a' most scurvy monster'-tamed into abject dread of Christian envoys, consuls, and sea captains, and all the other imps of European diplomacy, by whom he is sorely tormented in these his days of decrepitude.

For every trifle are they set upon

him;

Sometimes like apes, that moe and chatter at him,
And after, bite him; then like hedgehogs, which
Lie tumbling in his barefoot way.'

And we must say that Mr Borrow exhibits a very happy taste for making the most of his privileges and character as a cosmopolite a knack of irritating the reader's curiosity by imparting half glimpses of the unaccountable things he has seen-the

romantic corners of the earth which he has visited—the ways and learning of mysterious races of mankind with which he has become acquainted. Who does not feel a strong attraction to an author who is able to introduce his stories after such a fashion as the following?

'I was acquainted with a very handsome Jewess of Fez: she had but one eye, but that one was particularly brilliant. On asking her how she lost its fellow, she informed me.' Whilst I resided at Cordova, I was acquainted with an aged ecclesiastic; he was detained in Cordova on account of his political opinions, though he was otherwise at liberty. This person, who was upwards of eighty years of age, had formerly been inquisitor at Cordova. One night, whilst we were seated together.'The following is the account of the Dar-Bushi-fal (a tribe of fortunetellers), given me by a Jew of Fez, who had travelled much in Barbary.'

A hundred years, could I live so long, would not efface from my mind the appearance of an aged Ziganskie Attaman, or Captain of Zigani, and his grandson, who approached me on the meadow before Novo-Gorod.'

Once, during my own wanderings in Italy, I rested at nightfall by the side of a kiln, the air being piercingly cold; it was about four leagues from Genoa. Presently arrived three individuals to take advantage of the warmth a man, a woman, and a lad. They soon began to discourse. While at Seville, chance made us acquainted with a highly extraordinary individual: a tall, bony figure, in a tattered Andalusian hat, ragged capot, and still more ragged pantaloons?'

Who would not feel inclined, in some moods of the mind, to wander with him over the earth's surface continually, holding converse by turns with patriarchs, bishops, monks, soldiers, mendicants, Turks, Jews, Moors, and gypsies; now listening to the occult learning of my friend, Hyacinth, Archimandrite of Saint John Nevsky;' and now to the revelations of such beings as the unearthly commercial traveller described in the following passage:—

Among the Zingarri (Oriental gypsies) are not a few who deal in precious stones, and some who vend poisons; and the most remarkable individual whom it has been my fortune to encounter amongst the gypsies, whether of the Eastern or Western world, was a person who dealt in both these articles. He was a native of Constantinople, and in the pursuit of his trade had visited the most remote and remarkable portions of the world. He had traversed alone and on foot the greatest part of India; he spoke several dialects of the Malay, and understood the original language of Java, that is more fertile in poisons than even "far Iolchos and Spain." From what I could learn from him, it appeared that his jewels were in less request than his drugs, though he assured me there was scarcely a Bey or Satrap in Persia or Turkey whom he had not supplied with both. I have seen this individual in more countries than one, for he flits over the world like the shadow of a cloud; the last time at Granada, in Spain, whither he had come after paying a visit to his Gitano brethren in the presidio of Ceuta. Vol. i. p. 29.

In Andalusia,' says our author, 'the Gitano, or gypsy language, has been cultivated to a great degree by individuals who have sought the society of the Gitanos from a zest for their habits, their manners, and their songs; and such individuals have belonged to all classes-amongst them, noblemen and 'members of the priestly order.' Such as are addicted to the Gitanos and their language, are called, in Andalusia, los del' aficion, or those of the predilection.' Mr Borrow is very plainly one of the predilection.' His imagination seems to have been captivated, in early youth, with the romance attached to the unknown origin of this singular people, as well as the wild freedom of their habits. He learned their language, we suppose, in his own country; and soon discovered in his travels that which strikes all who are acquainted with it-its radical identity wherever the nation is spread. Guided by this clue, he seems to have made friends with them wherever he met them; in the green lanes of England, the mountain valleys of Hungary, and in the dilapidated suburbs of Spanish towns. The strong attachment of this people to their national language, for such it is, is one of the most striking features in their character; and ought to have been sufficient to have convinced that it is so, those who persisted in maintaining it to be nothing but a jargon, cant, or thieves' Latin, picked up at random in the different countries they have traversed. The moment they are addressed in it, their excitable temperament is roused at once; and they pass from their habitual sullenness to strangers, or their artificial loquacity when aiming at deception, into the most unrestrained expressions of pleasure and confidence. This was discovered by the benevolent Hoyland, when, on one of his first visits to a gypsy encampment, he showed that he understood the meaning of what a young gypsy woman said to her companion, having in fact only picked up a few words from Grellman's Vocabulary-They gave way to immoderate transports of joy, saying they would tell me any thing I wished to know ' of them.' And by virtue of the same talisman, (aided by his personal appearance, as we conjecture from some of his expressions,) Mr Borrow succeeded every where in captivating their hearts, wrapt up in impenetrable hatred and distrust of strangers. They took him for one of themselves; and in that confidence they gave him a full insight into their policy, their manner of life, their savage principles of independence.

Since the researches of Grellmann, Bischoff, and others, the gypsies can scarcely be made to say, in the words of Beranger'D'où nous venons? l'on n'en sait rien;

L'hirondelle

D'où vous vient-elle ?'