many these, accordingly, the necromancer never fails to commence, to gossip, and conclude. Previous to all this, she has had communication with some of the domestics; probably with the young lady's maid, whose good fortune she has pronounced: she has held sly intercourse also with other neighbouring domestics, before Miss had any with her. Putting all this together, with collateral and well managed opportunities of intelligence, she has picked up what has happened heretofore, and much which may be expected yet to happen. She is prepared for the lady's anxious application, and can turn it to good account. She can look backwards, and forwards: she can startle her unwary and weak client by her powers of retrospection, and thereby ensure an easy credit for their reality and truth in the scanning of futurity. She can now tell her, that she is intimate with a young man, who is not, all this time, destined for her, nor, consequently, she for him. She will just touch upon his general appearance; his complexion, perhaps his circumstances, and his calling. So far she can go safely: the rest is presage; mixed, most likely, with some acquired hints and intimations, gathered by the fortune teller. Here she is safe also; for, nothing can be disproved which no evidence can effectually confront; no authority be summoned, which can pronounce -this shall not be so. But, this is not all; what cannot be disproved, strengthened in probability by the inclination of the hearer, advances, by degrees, to certainty-to" confirmation, strong as proof from holy writ." Was the roving gipsy nothing worse than a prowler of the night, a robber of the hen roost, or the occasional seizer of the lamb or sheep, no greater harm would be done than such as is occasioned by many other outlaws, and disturbers of society. But, an evil of more disastrous magnitude than any among these, accompanies the ramble, and waits upon the halt, and tent, of the gipsy. This is, what we have hitherto, indeed, been pointing to, and exposing; the imposition practised on the human mind; and the weighty mischiefs produced by such imposition. I could instance a variety of these, as they are known to operate, at once amidst the higher, and the more subordinate members of the community: gentlewomen, positively gentlewomen, persons of education, and what we term accomplishment, becoming the willing dupes of imposture, and allowing it a principal place in the counsels of their thoughts, and the direction of their conduct; domestics tampered with, cajoled, and frightened into communion with these marauding vagrants; seduced to converse with them on the history and habits of families; and frequently driven from their places by some inauspicious augury, some ill foreboding, when it serves the purpose of the knave to remove them. Now, it is almost impossible to look seriously at this combination of deceit on one part, and submission of reason on the other, without some indignation at the vices and the follies of human nature. Lest this" indignation should rise into anger," I will put a speedy stop to my remarks, by asking, in conclusion-how are our magistracy and constables engaged-that they have not leisure to sweep the lodgments of these vagabonds, (one part gipsies, three parts common strollers,) from every station where they are observed, and to hunt them off the land?-To such as resort and listen to these jugglers, I would say no more, than to remind them, that nothing, except the divine prescience, can look into the recesses and secrets of futurity. Are they aware of the folly, the extravagance, the stupidity, the impiety of imagining, for a moment, that the exercise of this mighty, this ineffable, this sovereign prerogative, is delegated, for vain and mischievous purposes, to the lawless and the thievishthe shameless, the abandoned, and the profligate? |