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they are to be looked upon as titular ornaments, common to the Spanish Kleptocracy. He is extremely pleasant, especially in his younger days. His mother, who is no better than the progenitor of such a personage ought to be, happens to have the misfortune one day of being carted. Paul, who was then a schoolboy, was elected king on some boyish holiday; and riding out upon a half-starved horse, it picked up a small cabbage as they went through the market. The market - women began pelting the king with rotten oranges and turnip-tops; upon which, having feathers in his cap, and getting a notion in his head that they mistook him for his mother, who, agreeably to a Spanish custom, was tricked out in the same manner when she was carted, he halloo'd out, "Good women, though I wear feathers in my cap, I am none of Alonza Saturuo de Rebillo. She is my mother."

Paul used to be set upon unlucky tricks by the son of a man of rank, who preferred enjoying a joke to getting punished for it. Among others, one Christmas, a counsellor happening to go by of the name of Pontio de Auguirre, the little Don told his companion to call Pontius Pilate, and then to run away. He did so, and the angry counsellor followed after him with a knife in his hand, so that he was forced to take refuge in the house of the schoolmaster. The lawyer laid his indictment, and Paul got a hearty flogging, during which he was enjoined never to call Pontius Pilate again; to which he heartily agreed. The consequence was, that next day, when the boys were at prayers, Paul, coming to the Belief, and thinking that he was never again to name Pontius Pilate, gravely said, "Suffered under Pontio de Auguirre ;" which evidence of his horror of the scourge so interested the pedagogue, that, by a Catholic mode of dispensation, he absolved him from the next two whippings he should incur.

He

But we forget that our little picaro was a thief. One specimen of his talents this way, and we have done with the Spaniards. He went with young Don Diego to the university ; and here getting applause for some tricks he played upon people, and dandling, as it were, his growing propensity to theft, he invited his companions one evening to see him steal a box of comfits from a confectioner's. accordingly draws his rapier, which was stiff and well-pointed; runs violently into the shop; and exclaiming, "You 're a dead man!" makes a fierce lunge at the confectioner between the body and arm. Down drops the man, half Idead with fear; the others rush out. But what of the box of comfits? "Where are the box of comfits, Paul?" said the rogues: 66 we do not see what you have done after all, except frighten the fellow."-" Look here, my boys," answered Paul. They looked, and at the end of his rapier beheld, with shouts of laughter,

the vanquished box. He had marked it out on the shelf; and under pretence of lunging at the confectioner, pinked it away like a muffin.

Upon turning to Quevedo, we find that the story has grown a little upon our memory, as to detail; but this is the spirit of it. The prize here, it is to be observed, is something eatable; and the same yearning is a predominant property of Quevedo's sharpers, as well as the others.

Adieu, ye pleasant rogues of Spain ! ye surmounters of bad government, hunger, and misery, by the mere force of a light climate and fingers! The dinner calls;—and to talk about you before it, is as good as taking a ride on horseback.

We must return a moment to the Italian thieves, to relate a couple of stories related of Ariosto and Tasso. The former was for a short period governor of Grafagnana, a disturbed district in the Apennines, which his prudent and gentle policy brought back from its disaffection. Among its other troubles were numerous bands of robbers, two of the names of whose leaders, Domenico Maroco, and Filippo Pacchione, have come down to posterity. Ariosto, during the first days of his government, was riding out with a small retinue, when he had to pass through a number of suspicious-looking armed men. The two parties had scarcely cleared each other, when the chief of the strangers asked a servant, who happened to be at some distance behind the others, who that person was. "It is the captain of the citadel here," said the man," Lodovico Ariosto." The stranger no sooner heard the name, than he went running back to overtake the governor, who, stopping his horse, waited with some anxiety for the event. "I beg your pardon, Sir," said he, "but I was not aware that so great a person as the Signor Lodovico Ariosto was passing near me. My name is Filippo Pacchione; and when I knew who it was, I could not go on without returning to pay the respect due to so illustrious a name."

A doubt is thrown on this story, or rather on the particular person who gave occasion to it, by the similarity of an adventure related of Tasso. Both of them however are very probable, let the similarity be what it may; for both the poets had occasion to go through disturbed districts; robbers abounded in both their times; and the leaders being most probably men rather of desperate fortunes than want of knowledge, were likely enough to seize such opportunities of vindicating their better habits, and showing a romantic politeness. The enthusiasm too is quite in keeping with the national character; and it is to be observed that the particulars of Tasso's adventure are different, though the spirit of it is the same. He was journeying, it is said, in company with others, for better security against the banditti

who infested the borders of the papal territory, when they were told that Sciarra, a famous robber, was at hand in considerable force. Tasso was for pushing on, and defending themselves if attacked; but his opinion was overruled; and the company threw themselves, for safety, into the city of Mola. Here Sciarra kept them in a manner blocked up; but hearing that Tasso was among the travellers, he sent him word that he should not only be allowed to pass, but should have safe-conduct whithersoever he pleased. The lofty poet, making it a matter of delicacy, perhaps, to waive an advantage of which his company could not partake, declined the offer; upon which Sciarra sent another message, saying, that upon the sole account of Tasso, the ways should be left open. And they were so.

We can call to mind no particular German thieves, except those who figure in romances, and in the Robbers of Schiller. To say the truth, we are writing just now with but few books to refer to; and the better informed reader must pardon any deficiency he meets with in these egregious and furtive memorandums. Of the Robbers of Schiller an extraordinary effect is related. It is said to have driven a number of wild-headed young Germans upon playing at banditti, not in the bounds of a school or university, but seriously in a forest. The matter-of-fact spirit in which a German sets about being enthusiastic, is a metaphysical curiosity which modern events render doubly interesting. It is extremely worthy of the attention of those rare personages, entitled reflecting politicians. But we must take care of that kind of digression. It is very inhuman of these politics, that the habit of attending to them, though with the greatest good-will and sincerity, will always be driving a man upon thinking how his fellow-creatures are going on. There is a pleasant, well-known story of a Prussian thief and Frederick the Second.

We forget what was the precise valuable found upon the Prussian soldier, and missed from an image of the Virgin Mary; but we believe it was a ring. He was tried for sacrilege, and the case seemed clear against him, when he puzzled his Catholic judges by informing them, that the fact was, the Virgin Mary had given him that ring. Here was a terrible dilemma. To dispute the possibility or even probability of a gift from the Virgin Mary, was to deny their religion: while, on the other hand, to let the fellow escape on the pretence, was to canonize impudence itself. The worthy judges, in their perplexity, applied to the king, who, under the guise of behaving delicately to their faith, was not sorry to have such an opportunity of joking it. His majesty therefore pronounced, with becoming gravity, that the allegation of the soldier could not but have its due weight with all Catholic believers; but that in future, it was forbidden any Prus

sian subject, military or civil, to accept a present from the Virgin Mary.

The district, formerly rendered famous by the exploits of Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, and since become infamous by the tyranny of Ali Bey, has been very fertile in robbers. And no wonder for a semi-barbarous people so governed become thieves by necessity. The name indeed, as well as profession, is in such good receipt with an Albanian, that according to late travellers, it is a common thing for him to begin his history by saying, "When I was a robber- We remember reading of some Albanian or Sclavonian leader of banditti, who made his enemies suppose he had a numerous force with him, by distributing military caps upon the hedges.

The

There are some other nations who are all thieves, more or less; or comprise such numbers of them as very much militate against the national character. Such are the piratical Malays; the still more infamous Algerines; and the mongrel tribes between Arabia and Abyssinia. As to the Arabs, they have a prescriptive right, from tradition as well as local circumstances, to plunder everybody. The sanguinary ruffians of Ashantee and other black empires on the coast of Guinea are more like a government of murderers and ogres, than thieves. They are the next ruffians perhaps in existence to slave-dealers. gentlest nation of pilferers are the Otaheitans ; and something is to be said for their irresistible love of hatchets and old nails. Let the European trader, that is without sin, cast the first paragraph at them. Let him think what he should feel inclined to do, were a ship of some unknown nation to come upon his coast, with gold and jewels lying scattered about the deck. For no less precious is iron to the South Sea Islander. A Paradisiacal state of existence would be, to him, not the Golden, but the Iron Age. An Otaheitan Jupiter would visit his Danaë in a shower of tenpenny nails.

We are now come to a very multitudinous set of candidates for the halter, the thieves of our own beloved country. For what we know of the French thieves is connected with them, excepting Cartouche; and we remember nothing of him, but that he was a great ruffian, and died upon that worse ruffian, the rack.

There is, to be sure, an eminent instance of a single theft in the Confessions of Rousseau; and it is the second greatest blot in his book; for he suffered a girl to be charged with and punished for the theft, and maintained the lie to her face, though she was his friend, and appealed to him with tears. But it may be said for him, at any rate, that the world would not have known the story but for himself: and if such a disclosure be regarded by some as an additional offence (which it may be thought to be by some very delicate as well as dishonest people), we must recollect, that it was the ob

ject of his book to give a plain unsophisticated account of a human being's experiences; and that many persons of excellent repute would have been found to have committed actions as bad, had they given accounts of themselves as candid. Dr. Johnson was of opinion that all children were thieves and liars: and somebody, we believe a Scotchman, answered a fond speech about human nature, by exclaiming that "human nature was a rogue and a vagabond, or so many laws would not have been necessary to restrain it." We venture to differ, on this occasio. with both Englishman and Scotchman. Laws in particular, taking the bad with the good, are quite as likely to have made rogues, as restrained them. But we see, at any rate, what has been suspected of more orthodox persons than Rousseau; to say nothing of less charitable advantages which might be taken of such opinions. Rousseau committed a petty theft; and miserably did his false shame, the parent of so many crimes, make him act. But he won back to their infants' lips the bosoms of thousands of mothers. He restored to their bereaved and helpless owners thousands of those fountains of health and joy and before he is abused, even for worse things than the theft, let those whose virtue consists in custom, think of this.

As we have mixed fictitious with real thieves in this article, in a manner, we fear, somewhat uncritical (and yet the fictions are most likely founded on fact; and the life of a real thief is a kind of dream and romance), we will despatch our fictitious English thieves before we come to the others. And we must make shorter work of them than we intended, or we shall never come to our friend Du Vall. The length to which this article has stretched out, will be a warning to us how we render our paper liable to be run away with in future.

There is a very fine story of Three Thieves in Chaucer, which we must tell at large another time. The most prominent of the fabulous thieves in England is that bellipotent and immeasurable wag, Falstaff. If for a momentary freak, he thought it villanous to steal, at the next moment he thought it villanous not to steal.

"Hal, I pr'ythee, trouble me no more with vanity. I would to God thou and I knew where a commodity of good names were to be bought. An old lord of the council rated me the other day in the street, about you, Sir; but I marked him not. And yet he talked very wisely; but I regarded him not. And yet he talked wisely; and in the streets, too.

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We must take care how we speak of Macheath, or we shall be getting political again. Fielding's Jonathan Wild the Great is also, in this sense, "caviare to the multitude." But we would say more if we had room. Fathom, a deliberate scoundrel, compounded of the Jonathan Wilds and the more equivocal Cagliostros and other adventurers, is a thief not at all to our taste. We are continually obliged to call his mother to our recollection, in order to bear him. The only instance in which the character of an absolute profligate pickpocket was ever made comparatively welcome to our graver feelings, is in the extraor dinary story of " Manon l'Escaut," by the Abbé Prevost. It is the story of a young man, so passionately in love with a profligate female, that he follows her through every species of vice and misery, even when she is sent as a convict to New Orleans. His love, indeed, is returned. He is obliged to subsist upon her vices, and, in return, is induced to help her with his own, becoming a cheat and a swindler to supply her outrageous extravagances. On board the convict-ship (if we recollect) he waits on her through every species of squalidness, the convict-dress and her shaved head only redoubling his love by the help of pity. This seems a shocking and very immoral book; yet multitudes of very reputable people have found a charm in it. The fact is, not only that Manon is beautiful, sprightly, really fond of her lover, and after all, becomes reformed; but that it is delightful, and ought to be so, to the human heart, to see a vein of sentiment and real goodness looking out through all this callous surface of guilt. It is like meeting with a tree in a squalid hole of a city; a flower or a frank face in a reprobate purlieu. The capabilities of human nature are not compromised. The virtue alone seems natural; the guilt, as it so often is, seems artificial, and the result of some bad education or other circumstance. Nor is anybody injured. It is one of the shallowest of all shallow notions to talk of the harm of such works. Do we think nobody is to be harmed but the virtuous; or that there are not privileged harms and vices to be got rid of, as well as unprivileged? No good-hearted person will be injured by reading "Manon l'Escaut." There is the belief in goodness in it; a faith, the want of which does so much harm, both to the vicious and the over-righteous.

The prince of all robbers, English or foreign, is undoubtedly Robin Hood. There is a worthy Scottish namesake of his, Rob Roy, who has lately had justice done to all his injuries by a countryman; and the author, it seems, has now come down from the borders to see the Rob of the elder times well treated. We were obliged to tear ourselves away from his first volume, to go to this ill-repaying article. But Robin Hood will still remain the chief

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and "gentlest of thieves." He acted upon a larger scale, or in opposition to a larger injustice, to a whole political system. He "shook the superflux to the poor, and showed the heavens more just." However, what we have to say of him, we must keep till the trees are in leaf again, and the greenwood shade delightful.

We dismiss, in one rabble-like heap, the real Jonathan Wilds, Avershaws, and other heroes of the Newgate Calendar, who have no redemption in their rascality; and after them, for gentlemen-valets, may go the Barringtons, Major Semples, and other sneaking rogues, who held on a tremulous career of iniquity, betwixt pilfering and repenting. Yet Jack Sheppard must not be forgotten, with his ingenious and daring breaks-out of prison; nor Turpin, who is said to have ridden his horse with such swiftness from York to London, that he was enabled to set up an alibi. We have omitted to notice the celebrated Bucaniers of America; but these are fellows, with regard to whom we are willing to take Dogberry's advice, and "steal out of their company." Their history disappoints us with its dryness.

All hail thou most attractive of scapegraces! thou most accomplished of gentlemen of the road! thou, worthy to be called one of "the minions of the moon," Monsieur Claude Du Vall, whom we have come such a long and dangerous journey to see!

Claude Du Vall, according to a pleasant account of him in the Harleian Miscellany, was born at Domfront, in Normandy, in the year 1643, of Pierre Du Vall, miller, and Marguerite de la Roche, the fair daughter of a tailor. Being a sprightly boy, he did not remain in the country, but became servant to a person of quality at Paris, and with this gentleman he came over to England at the time of the Restoration. It is difficult to say, which came over to pick the most pockets and hearts, Charles the Second or Claude du Vall. Be this as it may, his "courses" of life (" for," says the contemporary historian, "I dare not call them vices,") soon reduced him to the necessity of going upon the road; and here "he quickly became so famous, that in a proclamation for the taking several notorious highwaymen, he had the honour to be named first."

"He took," says his biographer, "the

*Of Ivanhoe.

generous way of padding;" that is to say, he behaved with exemplary politeness to all coaches, especially those in which there were ladies, making a point of frightening them as amiably as possible, and insisting upon returning any favourite trinkets or keepsakes, for which they chose to appeal to him with "their most sweet voices."

It was in this character that he performed an exploit, which is the eternal feather in the cap of highway gentility. We will relate it in the words of our informer. Riding out with some of his confederates, "he overtakes a coach, which they had set over night, having intelligence of a booty of four hundred pounds in it. In the coach was a knight, his lady, and only one serving-maid, who, perceiving five horsemen making up to them, presently imagined that they were beset; and they were confirmed in this apprehension by seeing them whisper to one another and ride backwards and forwards. The lady, to show she was not afraid, takes a flageolet out of her pocket, and plays; Du Vall takes the hint, plays also, and excellently well, upon a flageolet of his own, and in this posture he rides up to the coach side. 'Sir,' says he to the person in the coach, 'your lady plays excellently, and I doubt not but that she dances as well; will you please to walk out of the coach, and let me have the honour to dance one coranto with her upon the heath?' 'Sir,' said the person in the coach, I dare not deny anything to one of your quality and good mind; you seem a gentleman, and your request is very reasonable:' which said, the lacquey opens the boot, out comes the knight, Du Vall leaps lightly off his horse, and hands the lady out of the coach. They danced, and here it was that Du Vall performed marvels; the best master in London, except those that are French, not being able to show such footing as he did in his great riding French boots. The dancing being over, he waits on the lady to her coach. As the knight was going in, says Du Vall to him, 'Sir, you have forgot to pay the music.' 'No, I have not,' replies the knight, and putting his hand under the seat of the coach, pulls out a hundred pounds in a bag, and delivers it to him, which Du Vall took with a very good grace, and courteously answered, 'Sir, you are liberal, and shall have no cause to repent your being so; this liberality of yours shall excuse you the other three hundred pounds' and giving him the word, that if he met with any more of the crew he might pass undisturbed, he civilly takes his leave of him.

"This story, I confess, justifies the great kindness the ladies had for Du Vall; for in this, as in an epitome, are contained all things that set a man off advantageously, and make him appear, as the phrase is, much a gentleman. First, here was valour, that he and but four

more durst assault a knight, a lady, a waitinggentlewoman, a lacquey, a groom that rid by to open the gates, and the coachman, they being six to five, odds at football; and besides, Du Vall had much the worst cause, and reason to believe, that whoever should arrive, would range themselves on the enemy's party. Then he showed his invention and sagacity, that he could, sur le champ, and, without studying, make that advantage on the lady's playing on the flageolet. He evinced his skill in instrumental inusic, by playing on his flageolet; in vocal, by his singing; for (as I should have told you before) there being no violins, Du Vall sung the coranto himself. He manifested his agility of body, by lightly dismounting off his horse, and with ease and freedom getting up again, when he took his leave; his excellent deportment, by his incomparable dancing, and his graceful manner of taking the hundred pounds; his generosity, in taking no more; his wit and eloquence, and readiness at repartees, in the whole discourse with the knight and lady, the greatest part of which I have been forced to omit."

The noise of the proclamation made Du Vall return to Paris; but he came back in a short time for want of money. His reign however did not last long after his restoration. He made an unlucky attack, not upon some illbred passengers, but upon several bottles of wine, and was taken in consequence at the Hole-in-the-Wall in Chandos-street. His life was interceded for in vain he was arraigned and committed to Newgate; and executed at Tyburn in the 27th year of his age; showers of tears from fair eyes bedewing his fate, both while alive in prison, and when dead at the

fatal tree.

Du Vall's success with the ladies of those days, whose amatory taste was of a turn more extensive than delicate, seems to have made some well-dressed English gentlemen jealous. The writer of Du Vall's life, who is a man of wit, evidently has something of bitterness in his railleries upon this point; but he manages them very pleasantly. He pretends that he is an old bachelor, and has never been able to make his way with his fair countrywomen, on account of the French valets that have stood in his way. He says he had two objects in writing the book. "One is, that the next Frenchman that is hanged may not cause an uproar in this imperial city; which I doubt not but I have effected. The other is a much harder task to set my countrymen on even terms with the French, as to the English ladies' affections. If I should bring this about, I should esteem myself to have contributed much to the good of this kingdom.

"One remedy there is, which, possibly, may conduce something towards it.

"I have heard, that there is a new invention

of transfusing the blood of one animal into another, and that it has been experimented by putting the blood of a sheep into an Englishman. I am against that way of experiments; for, should we make all Englishmen sheep, we should soon be a prey to the loure.

"I think I can propose the making that experiment a more advantageous way. I would have all gentlemen, who have been a full year or more out of France, be let blood weekly, or oftener, if they can bear it. Mark how much they bleed; transfuse so much French lacquey's blood into them; replenish these last out of the English footmen, for it is no matter what becomes of them. Repeat this operation toties quoties, and in process of time you will find this event: either the English gentlemen will be as much beloved as the French lacqueys, or the French lacqueys as little esteemed as the English gentlemen."

Butler has left an Ode, sprinkled with his usual wit, "To the happy Memory of the Most Renowned Du Vall," who

-Like a pious man, some years before
Th' arrival of his fatal hour,
Made every day he had to live
To his last minute a preparative;
Taught the wild Arabs on the road
To act in a more gentle mode;
Take prizes more obligingly from those,
Who never had been bred filous;

And how to hang in a more graceful fashion
Than e'er was known before to the dull English nation.

As it may be thought proper that we should end this lawless article with a good moral, we will give it two or three sentences from Shakspeare worth a whole volume of sermons against thieving. The boy who belongs to Falstaff's companions, and who begins to see through the shallowness of their cunning and way of life, says that Bardolph stole a lutecase, carried it twelve miles, and sold it for three halfpence.

XXI. A FEW THOUGHTS ON SLEEP.

THIS is an article for the reader to think of, when he or she is warm in bed, a little before he goes to sleep, the clothes at his ear, and the wind moaning in some distant crevice.

"Blessings," exclaimed Sancho, "on him that first invented sleep! It wraps a man all round like a cloak." It is a delicious moment certainly, that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past the limbs have been just tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful: the labour of the day is done. A gentle failure of the perceptions comes creeping over one :-the spirit of consciousness disengages itself more and more, with slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching her hand from that of her

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