picture, if it may be called such, is suspended
by ribbons formed into a bow, and from this
again falls a drapery or festoon of foliage, looped
up at each corner by a rosette, with pendants of
the same foliage dropping from them.

About the latter end of the eighteenth
century, the ingenious and benevolent Count
Rumford made a simple but useful improvement in
grates, by contracting and sloping off the sides
of the fireplace, and thus giving it an oblique
instead of a square shape; by which means
great waste of heat was avoided and the
appearance of the chimney rendered more sightly.
Grates were now become fixtures, and, when
thus altered, they were said to be Rumfordised.
This may be regarded as the forerunner of the
register grates, which have gone on improving
until they have reached their present high state
of finish and beauty.

AT THE COURT OF THE KING OF THE
GIPSIES.

"I WOULD tak' ye to the ould king myse',
but I am no gleik (whatever that may be) wi'
his daughter the Fa'a."

"The who?"

"The Fa'a; the king is a Bligh, but his
daughter is a Fa'a."

Receiving no end of thanks from the
handsome girl who had been my guide so far, for a
very small coin, I walked forward to pay my
respects to Mr. Bligh, the King of the Gipsies,
who accorded me a cordial but rather dignified
reception. The old gentleman (he died but the
other day) had been considerably excited by
certain events of the morning, and had not
yet recovered his equanimity.

"The cattle on a thousand hills were mine
and my forbears, and the land was mine for their
fodder, and now what are they leaving me?
They clip and they reive till my land is well
nigh gane, and my place will be no more found.
A fine thing to reive us of our ain at this gate.
I'll send a 'morial to the Queen Victoria, if I
can find ane that will tak' it, and if she don't
gie me back my land, she must e'en gie me a
pension, or a tribute like."

There was much that was striking and
peculiar in the manner in which the old man
expatiated on his real or imaginary wrongs; and the
occasional use of phrases from the Hebrew
prophets introduced, as if they were the ordinary
and unpremeditated expression of his thoughts,
added much to the impressiveness of his
language. His daughter the " Fa'a," walked at the
pony's head, and with her tall, muscular, and
almost manly figure, and the peculiar cast of her
features (presenting a perfect resemblance to
those of the gigantic head of Memnon in the
British Museum), was decidedly handsome. The
long eye inclined upward at the outer angle, the
almost straight nose projecting but little from
the face, with the thin delicate nostril, the
lips slightly protruded at the line of juncture:
the long oval face and round undimpled chin
bearing a close resemblance to the character of
countenance we are in the habit of attributing
to the ancient Egyptians.

The way back to Yetholm lay down the reverse
side of the hill to that by which I had ascended,
and finding conversation difficult, not to say
impossible, amidst the clamour and interruption
of the noisy crowd that accompanied us, I
arranged for a special visit of ceremony to his
majesty shortly after my arrival in the gipsy
village. I call it the " gipsy village," as it is
occupied exclusively by that people, and is
separated by some three-fourths of a mile, and
by the wild and picturesque stream of the
Beaumont water, from the other .village of the
same name, where I had put up the night
previous.

The gipsy settlement consisted of about sixty
or seventy houses, much of the class usually
occupied by the lowest order of agricultural
labourers; but as far as I had an opportunity
for judging, superior to them generally in
comfort and cleanliness, and much surpassing in these
respects an Irish, or, indeed, a Scotch village of
the same pretensions. The habits of the people,
instead of being nomadic as I expected to find
them, were decidedly industrial, as was evidenced
by the fact that instead of adjourning to the
beer-shops to talk over the events of the morning
as a Saxon peasantry would have done, and,
indeed, actually were doing in the adjoining
village; ten minutes after our return found the
men all pursuing their usual avocation, and with
the true Ishmaelitist's love of " sitting at the
door of their tents," such light handicrafts as
admitted of it, basket-making, coopering, and
such- like, were invariably pursued outside
their cottage doors. This certainly contributed
an air of cheerfulness and respectability, wanting
in a village street, when you see only an
occasional passer-by, and a crowd of idlers at
the inn-door. In physical, and, perhaps, in moral
development, these people struck me as being
a decidedly superior race than we are
accustomed to see in the lanes and commons of
England, and are certainly not to be compared with
their degenerate brethren in Spain, Germany,
and the south of Europe. A more than usually
orderly appearance was given to the village by
the children, instead of running wild in the
gutter, being in every instance, when of sufficient
age, engaged at their father's feet, assisting in
the parental occupation.

It was certainly a pleasant and cheery sight
to see a man seated outside his cottage door in.
the bright sunshine, hacking and chipping at
the staves of a barrel, or plaiting and twisting
the withies for a basket, surrounded by his two,
three, or four swarthy children, briskly and
apparently profitably occupied in the same calling,
while inside the cottage door the same glance
might include the wife at her household duties,
seated on the ground, preparing the dinner
in the midst of the children, whose tender
years rendered them her more especial charge.
I observed, also, the clergyman of the parish
going from cottage to cottage, engaged in the
duties of his calling. In fact, I accompanied him