they are essentially as nomadic, as predatory,
as incorrigibly reluctant to any
reputable task, and as diligent in any knavish
operation; as dissipated, careless, improvident,
and municipally worthless, as any Caloro or
Rommaney chal that the Polyglottian Mr.
Borrow has ever told us of. But the
Bohemians of civilised society are so far different
from their brethren of Egypt that they
recognise no chief—no king, queen, or
tetrarch; that they obey no laws, save those
of their own sweet wills; that they migrate
indiscriminately from tribe to tribe; that
they intermarry freely (when they can) with
the Nazarenes or respectable people; that
they are not, as gipsies are, born Bohemians
of necessity, but fall, or are led, or wander
heedlessly into Bohemia; and, finally, that
far from having the rooted antipathy to
decent society and a settled condition of
life which the gipsy tribe have, your modern
Bohemian is continually haunted by the
ambition (seldom fulfilled) to forsake his
vagabond ways; to wash, shave, leave off
sack, and live cleanly like a gentleman.

I cannot attempt to define the limits or
boundaries of Bohemia; for it has none. Its
head may be in the Queen's palace, and its
extremities in the hovel of the beggar. There
are bits of Bohemia scattered all over the
United Kingdom: and if, at some review of
the body social, an order were given for all
who owned to the name of Smith and all who
—no, not owned, but possessed the character
of Bohemianism—to fall out of the ranks, it
is my opinion that the number of the Smiths
and the number of the Bohemians would not
be very unequal. Every class, and tribe,
and clique in society; every trade, profession,
calling, and avocation—every cell in the
great mundane bee-hive possesses its Bohemian
element. The army, the navy, the
pulpit, the bar, the press, the counter, the
desk, the kerb-stone, and the gaol, send forth
their recruits to swell the Bohemian
army. Court and fashion can no more boast
of or bewail their Bohemianism, than law and
the church and commerce; the severities of
sectarianism, the rigidities of money-hunting,
the asceticism of business, the preoccupations
of statesmanship, the endless cogs and wheels
and pendulums, and bolts and bars, with
which mankind have fenced about the social
clock to regulate and steady it, and cause it
to keep exact time, and chime the hour with
decent intonations—are all powerless to
subdue Bohemia, which is for ever playing
tricks with the hands of the clock, meddling
with its weights, tampering with its springs,
causing it to run down and go wrong, but never
to stop; so as to necessitate from time to time
the calling in of some state clock-maker, who
ofttimes makes only a sorry bungling job in
mending the machine.

The inhabitants of Bohemia, like great men,
may be divided into three grand divisions:
those who are born Bohemian, those who
achieve Bohemianism, and those who have
Bohemianism thrust upon them. I will not,
however, in the present instance, attempt to
adopt this system of classification, but will
cull my few samples of Bohemians rather
with reference to the rank they hold in the
republic of Bohemia than to the
circumstances under which they embraced that
condition of life.

The old nobility, for the preservation of
which it is so essential, according to Young
Englandism, that wealth and commerce,
laws and learning, should die, is by no
means deficient in the Bohemian element.
The republic has numerous citizens in the
House of Peers, and among the untitled but
still essentially patrician branches of the
aristocracy. What a thorough denison of
Bohemia, for instance, is the right honourable
the Earl of Fourcloze. Brian de la Bond,
Earl of Fourcloze and Baron Mordegage,
has been of Bohemia any time these fifty
years. His father's grandfather was the
notorious Tom Bond who was so useful to
Sir Robert Walpole, and found his coronet at
last pretty much as the cock in the fable
found the jewel in the farm-yard. The
Bonds, however, soon discovered that they
were a branch of the De la Bonds, who came
over with the Conqueror of course, and all
the rest of it; one of whom was private
secretary to the Norman monarch, and was
by him created Lord Sign and Seal, a title
which afterwards unjustly alienated from
the family. Tom Bond, in the first instance
Baron, then Viscount Mordegage, left his title
and estates to his eldest son Alberic; who,
becoming even more useful to Mr. Pitt than his
father had been to Sir Robert Walpole, was
created Earl of Fourcloze. This excellent
nobleman was enthusiastically devoted to
field sports, and died in a fit of apoplexy at a
cock-fight. The two first possessors of
the title had been remarkably saving and
accumulative peers, and were enabled to
leave to the third, the right honourable Ulric,
estates of great value, and ready cash in
abundance. The third lord, however, to use
a thoroughly Bohemian phrase, blued the
large possessions bequeathed to him in every
imaginable species of Bohemian extravagance.
He raised a regiment during the American
war, and paid for it—partially. He made the
grand tour thrice running, played with
Ferdinand Count Fathom, and lost. He
pulled down Mordegage Hall, and
commenced the building of that magnificent
structure, Vellum Castle (near Deedsworth,
Hampshire), but could never scrape money
enough together to finish it. He ran horses
at Epsom, Ascot, Doncaster, and Goodwood,
and his cracks were always the favourites,
and were always nearly winning, but never
did. He horsed the Deedsworth mail for
two seasons, was master and almost owner
of the Hampshire hounds; had shares in
lead-mines, coal-mines, canals, and slate