By an attentive observation, we may perceive that the Gipseys are endued with very good capacities, which promise to make a profitable return, for much trouble bestowed upon them. In the first Section one attempt, made on this speculation, is produced, and it is hoped it will be found sufficiently complete, to exhibit the leading features of their character.
The origin of the Gipseys has remained a perfect philosopher’s stone till a late period. For more than two hundred years, people have been anxious to discover who these guests were, that, under the name of Gipseys, came, unknown and uninvited, into Europe, in the fifteenth century, and have chosen to remain here ever since. No enquirer ever broached an opinion that met with his successor’s approbation; a fourth scarcely heard what a third had said, before he passed sentence and advanced something new. We have no reason to wonder at the miscarriage of these enquiries, which were neither more nor less than a collection of conjectures founded on imaginary proofs and partial speculation.—An author set to work, to discover a country whence the Gipseys came, or a people to whom they could belong; he found out a place which had been named, for instance, Zeugitana, or a people who bore some faint resemblance to the Gipseys. As one coal lights another, so these two similarities became perfectly applicable to the people whose origin he was seeking; he stopped here, and published his discovery.
Several investigators laid their foundation on hearsay, and unauthenticated evidence; they then endeavoured to assist this testimony by modelling the extraneous circumstances which could not be passed over, in order to make them coincide; if, notwithstanding all this, difficulties still occurred, they borrowed Alexander’s sword, and cut the knot which no milder means could undo.
That this has been the mode of proceeding hitherto, will be frequently proved in the course of the work. Even had the imagination not magnified any thing, nor modelled circumstances agreeably to its own fancy, yet the following, which is taken for granted, “_that two people resembling each other in one or two particulars_, _must be descended from the same stock_,” is an over-hasty conclusion. In the first place, reject that the most different nations may agree in some points; further, make the allowance for various parts of the world producing inhabitants of similar shape and colour;—What, then, remains to prove that the Gipseys are descended from any one of the people from whom they have been traced?