though heavily laden with irons.
When about half-way over, he was espied by a sentinel, who fired at him,
and shot him in the calf of the leg: but the undaunted robber struck out
manfully, reached the shore, and was out of sight before the officers of
justice could get ready their boats to follow him. He was captured again
in 1826, tried at Mayence, and sentenced to death. He was a tall, strong,
handsome man, and his fate, villain as he was, excited much sympathy all
over Germany. The ladies especially were loud in their regret that nothing
could be done to save a hero so good-looking, and of adventures so
romantic, from the knife of the headsman.

Mr. Charles Macfarlane, in speaking of Italian banditti, remarks, that the
abuses of the Catholic religion, with its confessions and absolutions,
have tended to promote crime of this description. But he adds more truly,
that priests and monks have not done half the mischief which has been
perpetrated by ballad-mongers and story-tellers. If he had said
playwrights also, the list would have been complete. In fact, the theatre,
which can only expect to prosper, in a pecuniary sense, by pandering to
the tastes of the people, continually recurs to the annals of thieves and
banditti for its most favourite heroes. These theatrical robbers, with
their picturesque attire, wild haunts, jolly, reckless, devil-may-care
manners, take a wonderful hold upon the imagination, and whatever their
advocates may say to the contrary, exercise a very pernicious influence
upon public morals. In the Memoirs of the Duke of Guise upon the
Revolution of Naples in 1647 and 1648, it is stated, that the manners,
dress, and mode of life of the Neapolitan banditti were rendered so
captivating upon the stage, that the authorities found it absolutely
necessary to forbid the representation of dramas in which they figured,
and even to prohibit their costume at the masquerades. So numerous were
the banditti at this time, that the duke found no difficulty in raising an
army of them, to aid him in his endeavours to seize on the throne of
Naples. He thus describes them:[49] "They were three thousand five hundred
men, of whom the oldest came short of five-and-forty years, and the
youngest was above twenty. They were all tall and well made, with long
black hair, for the most part curled; coats of black Spanish leather, with
sleeves of velvet, or cloth of gold; cloth breeches with gold lace, most
of them scarlet; girdle