The gypsy race of Russia, to whom these itinerants belong, are of the same Asiatic origin as those met with in southern Europe; no country has power to change their nature, no association can refine them. They will not try to live by honest labor; everywhere they are acknowledged outcasts, and it is their nature to grovel like animals. The cunning instinct of theft is born in them; adroitness in stealing they consider to be a commendable accomplishment,--parents teach it to their children. They are wanderers wherever found, begging at one country-house and stealing at the next; in summer sleeping on the grass, in winter digging holes and burrowing in the ground. They are called in central Russia "Tsiganie," and they group together in largest numbers in and about the Eastern Steppe, just as those of Spain do at Grenada and near to the Alhambra. All kindly efforts of the Russian government to civilize these land-rovers has utterly failed; not infrequently it becomes necessary to invade their quarters, and to visit condign punishment upon the tribe by sabre and bullet, to keep them within reasonable bounds. Quite a colony of gypsies inhabit a certain portion of Moscow, having adopted the local dress, and also conformed ostensibly to the conventionalities about them; but they never in reality amalgamate with other races,--they are far more clannish than the Jews. Both the men and women ply trades which will not bear investigation or the light of day. The former make an open business of horse-trading, and the latter of public-dancing, singing, and fortune-telling. Belonging to this community is a small body of singers who practise together, and who are employed at all public festivals in the city,--which would, indeed, be considered quite incomplete without them. This choir consists of six or eight female voices and four male, capable of affording a very original if not quite harmonious performance.
As regards the Petrofski Park, the truth is it is a famous resort for reckless pleasure-seekers, and largely made up of the demi-monde, where scenes anything but decorous are presented to the eyes of strangers during the afternoons and the long summer twilight. But those who wish to see and study "life," fast life, have only to visit the Châteaux des Fleurs, or Marina-Rostcha, which are also in the environs of the town. As in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, the police, who cannot suppress these resorts, strive to control them so far that they shall not outrage openly the conventionalities of society. Human nature is much the same all over the world, though its coarsest features are more obtruded upon observation in some lands than in others. In extensive travel and experience, the author has learned that it is not always in semi-barbarous countries that grossness and indecency will be found most to prevail. It must be admitted that there are temples of vice in Moscow which for ingenuity of temptation, and lavish and gilded display, are not equalled elsewhere in Europe.