BY JAMES SIMSON, Editor of “SIMSON’S HISTORY OF THE GIPSIES,” and Author of “CONTRIBUTIONS TO NATURAL HISTORY AND PAPERS ON OTHER SUBJECTS”; “CHARLES WATERTON”; “THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND JOHN BUNYAN”; “THE SCOTTISH CHURCHES AND THE GIPSIES”; AND “REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD AT INVERKEITHING, OR LIFE AT A LAZARETTO.” “According to the fair play of the world, Let me have audience.”— Shakspeare . NEW YORK: JAMES MILLER. EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN & STEWART. LONDON: BAILLIÈRE, TYNDALL &amp

Although what is contained in the following pages should explain itself, a few prefatory remarks may not be out of place.  In the Scottish Churches and the Gipsies I said that, “in regard to the belief about the destiny of the Gipsies,” “almost all have joined in it, as something established”—that “the Gipsies ‘cease to be Gipsies’ by conforming, in a great measure, with the dress and habits of others, and keeping silence as to their being members of the race;” and that “in bringing forward this

Your letter of the 14th April reached me after some delay.  When you wrote it I presume you had not given your fullest consideration to the question raised by you.  For when John Bunyan said that his “father’s house was of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land,” and that they were “not of the Israelites,” that is, “not Jews,” he could not possibly have meant that they were what are generally called “natives of England.”  Who in Bunyan’s time were the “meanes

In regard to what might be called the “nationality” of John Bunyan I said, in my letter of the 5th May, that “the question at issue is really not one of evidence, but of an unfortunate feeling of caste that bars the way against all investigation and proof.”  I do not know what the congregation of Bunyan’s Church at Bedford consists of, but I presume it is composed of humble people, engaged in making a living and bringing up their children becomingly, and indulging in the simple conventionalities

The History of the Gipsies , by Walter Simson, which I edited and published in 1865, was ready for the press in 1858.  In a prefatory note to it I said:— “In the present work the race has been treated of so fully and elaborately, in all its aspects, as in a great measure to fill and satisfy the mind, instead of being, as heretofore, little better than a myth to the understanding of the most intelligent person.” In 1872 Mr. Leland published his work on The English Gipsies and their Language , in

Mr. Leland’s style of reasoning, his lack of candour, and his reserve as to how he took up the Gipsy question, and to whom he had been indebted at first for some of his ideas, detract very much from the desire that one would naturally have to put confidence in him.  His many confident assertions about what others have grave doubts and his frequent contradictions have a similar effect. In The Gipsies there is very little told us of the race in America (not American Gipsies) of any kind, and yet M

SIMSON’S HISTORY OF THE GIPSIES. 575 Pages .  Crown 8vo .  Price , $2.00. National Quarterly Review .—“The title of this work gives a correct idea of its character; the matter fully justifies it.  Even in its original form it was the most interesting and reliable history of the Gipsies with which we were acquainted.  But it is now much enlarged, and brought down to the present time.  The disquisition on the past, present, and future of that singular race, added by the editor, greatly enhances th

“In this pamphlet Mr. James Simson again does battle in support of his contention that Bunyan was a Gipsy—a thesis first promulgated by him in an elaborate work on the Gipsies, published in 1865.  He is indignant at Mr. Froude for ignoring the discussion of the question in his recent biography of Bunyan, and he comments in strong terms on the dicta of Mr. Francis H. Groome, in the article ‘Gipsies,’ in the new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica , that John Bunyan ‘does not appear to have had

Dublin University Magazine, July, 1875. “The principal articles in this volume that have reference to natural history originally appeared in Land and Water , and are, in many respects, highly interesting.  Concerning vipers and snakes, we are presented with a good deal of information that is instructive, not only as regards their habits generally, but also with respect to points that are in dispute among naturalists.”  “For instance, it is a vexed question whether, under any circumstances, the y