Another section are workers in metal, such as tinkers and brass-founders; a third work in wood, and perform various duties connected with the building trade; but a large proportion are still vagabonds and thieves, who infest the country, and are a nuisance to the honest peasants and labourers. The last-named class profess no religion and obey no law, excepting the criminal law when they are forced. The settled part of the gipsy community belong to the national Church; the women are chaste as against the Roumanians, but their morality is said to be very lax amongst themselves. It is, however, hardly fair to speak in these general terms of the gipsy race at present. As already stated, many of them occupy very honourable positions in society; and some years since a German writer predicted what is now taking place, namely, a fusion of the gipsies with the Roumanians.[37] We were informed by a learned philologist in Bucarest that this process is rapidly going on; the castes are not so clearly defined; intermarriages with Roumanians are of daily occurrence; many of the gipsies do not even know their own language; and their number is rapidly diminishing. Intellectually they are talented, but lazy. Many of the men, and still more of the women, are very handsome. Although every gradation of shade is to be found amongst their faces, pretty much as one sees in the negro race in the United States, the features of the Roumanian gipsies are generally well-formed Indo-European. Nothing is more striking than to see two women pass each other, or walking side by side: the one a Roumanian, fair, florid, and blue-eyed, the other a gipsy with a skin as black as a sloe, jet-black hair, and black eyes, and yet the features similar in both cases, and each woman in her way handsome.[38]
Many stories have been related concerning the gipsies, and their character has often been invested with romance; but we cannot afford them more space, and we are loth to give _any_ to another class of beings whom one sees in Roumania, namely, the self-mutilated sect of Lipovans, well known to persons who are, or rather were formerly, acquainted with Russia, out of which country they were driven when they took up their abode in Roumania. They are chiefly hackney-carriage drivers, and wear the Russian dress, consisting of a long cloth coat bound at the waist by a belt, and a round peaked cap. We were informed that the police are making efforts to get hold of the leaders of this sect, which is undoubtedly a blot upon the civilisation of any country in which its members are to be found.