PLEASANT WEATHER. PLEASANT WEATHER. Thank God for pleasant weather! Thank him, teeming valley, Thank God, of good the giver; To the nodding trees! Thank God with cheerful spirit, In a glow of love, For what we here inherit, And our hopes above. Universal Nature Revels in her birth, When God, in pleasant weather, Smiles upon the earth. A FEW WORDS ABOUT GIPSIES. PERHAPS Some of my readers have seen men and women belonging to this very strange people. They are very swarthy, all of them, have very black hair and bright black eyes; both men and women wear ear-rings, and while very fond of tawdry finery, never look clean in their persons. They first came into Europe about the beginning of the fifteenth cen A FEW WORDS ABOUT GIPSIES. tury, and then, as now, were dealers in horses, tinkers, basket weavers, fond of imposing upon people with fortune-telling and jugglery. They gave out to the French people, who were the first to notice them, that they were Egyptians, and the word Gipsy is a corruption of Egyptian. But as they came into France from Bohemia, the French called them Bohemians. As they spread themselves over different parts of Europe, and still kept their wandering habits, other nations called them by names which simply mean "Wanderers." And wanderers they are. They came first from India, and their strange jargon has in it many Hindoo words. They are also like some of the Hindoos in their features, in their fondness for gay colours in their clothing, in their want of cleanliness, in their love of the flesh of animals that have died a natural death, and in their loving and making a lie. In the time of Henry the Eighth many Acts of Parliament were passed against them in England. They were warned to "avoid the realm." Some were hung on no other charge than that they were Gipsies; and Sir Matthew Hale tells us that no less than thirteen were hung at one Sussex assize; and he himself, in 1664, left one to be hung at Bury who had A FEW WORDS ABOUT GIPSIES. been convicted of fortune-telling. Our laws are not so harsh and cruel now. A remarkable queen in Hungary once tried very hard to break off the Gipsies in that country from their strange and wandering habits. They were not to live in tents, nor trade in horses, nor eat pork that had died a natural death, nor to be called any longer Tzigani, "Wanderers," but "New Boors," or peasants. They were to settle down as farmers or smiths; and, so far did this queen or empress, Maria Theresa, carry her plan, that the Gipsies' little children were carried off from their parents to be out of the reach of their evil influence. It was all in vain, as it was sure to be. It is very sad to think that while the Gipsies, for their own ends, pass themselves off as being of the same religion as the people of each country among whom they wander, that they have little or no religion at all. Many curious customs, like those among heathen people are still kept up among them; and the Dutch always call the Gipsies Heiden or heathen. Some good people have tried very hard to teach them the good news of God; but we fear that many thousands of them are still men "who walk in darkness." THE SEASONS. THE SEASONS. OFT have I seen the laughing Spring Was by her hand with verdure crown'd. But Autumn's sun soon ceased to burn, In viewless icy car was nigh. When Winter came, the gorgeous sun Now sunk in winter's joyless tomb. Thus blooming is Life's early spring; |