As he was quite fair in complexion, I casually remarked, "I should have never supposed you could speak Rommany--you don't look like it." To which he replied, very gravely, in a tone as of gentle reproach, "You don't look a Gipsy yourself, sir; but you know you _are_ one--_you talk like one_." Truly, the secret of the Rommany has been well kept in England.

It seems so to me when I reflect that, with the exception of Lavengro and the Rommany Rye, {5} I cannot recall a single novel, in our language, in which the writer has shown familiarity with the _real_ life, habits, or language of the vast majority of that very large class, the itinerants of the roads.

Mr Dickens has set before us Cheap Jacks, and a number of men who were, in their very face, of the class of which I speak; but I cannot recall in his writings any indication that he knew that these men had a singular secret life with their _confreres_, or that they could speak a strange language; for we may well call that language strange which is, in the main, Sanscrit, with many Persian words intermingled.

Mr Dickens, however, did not pretend, as some have done, to specially treat of Gipsies, and he made no affectation of a knowledge of any mysteries.

He simply reflected popular life as he saw it.