Slowly making their way through all these, our party reached and passed the first barrier (for Epsom Heath is divided off into circles, the entrance to each succeeding one towards the hill or the Grand Stand, commanding a higher and higher price).
Our friends found themselves upon the heath, that was occupied by very much the same sort of crowd which had obstructed the roads leading hither. It was dotted all over by gipsies’ tents, fruit-stalls, refreshment-stands, costermongers’ carts, and so forth, and so forth, and animated by idlers, loafers, peddlers, ballad-singers, image-boys, fortune-tellers, “confidence” men, and women, thieves, gamblers, and, in short, every variety of the lower order of human nature.
Passing through all these—passing barrier after barrier, and circle after circle, our party at last found themselves upon the fine breezy and commanding hill, which was comparatively free from the crowd, and occupied only by the carriages of the nobility and gentry, filled with fair women and well-behaved men.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE GIPSIES.
“Theirs is the deep lore of the olden time,
And in it are fine mysteries of the stars
Solved with a cunning wisdom, and strange thoughts,
Half prophecy, half poetry, and dreams
Clearer than truth, and speculations wild
That touched the secrets of your very soul.”