r side was conscious of its noble
obligation. The vulgar audacity of a bullying thief was suitably
answered by the ungracious, involuntary submission of the terrified
traveller. From end to end of England you might hear the cry of 'Stand
and deliver.' Yet how changed the accent! The beauty of gesture, the
deference of carriage, the ready response to a legitimate demand--all
the qualities of a dignified art were lost for ever. As its professors
increased in number, the note of aristocracy, once dominant, was
silenced. The meanest rogue, who could hire a horse, might cut a
contemptible figure on Bagshot Heath, and feel no shame at robbing
a poor man. Once--in that Augustan age, whose brightest ornament
was Captain Hind--it was something of a distinction to be decently
plundered. A century later there was none so humble but he might be
asked to empty his pocket. In brief, the blight of democracy was upon
what should have remained a refined, secluded art; and nowise is the
decay better illustrated than in the appreciation of bunglers, whose
exploits were scarce worth a record.

James Maclaine, for instance, was the hero of his age. In a history
of cowards he would deserve the first place, and the 'Gentleman
Highwayman,' as he was pompously styled, enjoyed a triumph denied to
many a victorious general. Lord Mountford led half White's to do him
honour on the day of his arrest. On the first Sunday, which he spent in
Newgate, three thousand jostled for entrance to his cell, and the
poor devil fainted three times at the heat caused by the throng of his
admirers. So long as his fate hung in the balance, Walpole could not
take up his pen without a compliment to the man, who claimed to have
robbed him near Hyde Park. Yet a more pitiful rascal never showed the
white feather. Not once was he known to take a purse with his own hand,
the summit of his achievement being to hold the horses' heads while his
accomplice spoke with the passengers. A poltroon before his arrest, in
Court he whimpered and whinnied for mercy; he was carried to the cart
pallid and trembling, and not even his preposterous finery availed to
hearten him at the gallows. Taxed with his timidity, he attempted to
excuse himself on the inadmissible plea of moral rectitude. 'I have as
much personal courage in an honourable cause,' he exclaimed in a passage
of false dignity, 'as any man in Britain; but as I knew I was committing
acts of injustice, so I went to them half lo