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A VERY GOOD BOOK 002

and he claims to have been the first collector who, stealing the money, yetleft the case.The new method was incomparably more subtle than theold: it afforded an opportunity of a hitherto unimagined delicacy;thewielders of the scissors were aghast at a skill which put their own clumsiness to shame,and which to a previous generation would have seemed the wildest fantasy.  Yet so strong is habit, that even when the
picking of pockets was a recognised industry, the superfluous scissors still survived,  many a rogue has hanged  the Tree because he attempted with a vulgar implement.

But, despite the innovation of Simon Fletcher, the highway was the glory of Elizabeth, the still greater glory of the Stuarts.The Lacedmonians were the only people,said Horace Walpole,except the English who seem to have put robbery on a right foot.And the
English of the seventeenth century need fear the rivalry of no Lacedmonian.They were, indeed, the most valiant and graceful robbers that the world has ever known. The Civil War encouraged their profession, and, since many of them had fought for their king, a proper hatred of Cromwell sharpened their wits.they tempered their sport with a merry wit;their avarice alone surpassed their courtesy; and they robbed with so perfect a regard for the proprieties that it was only the pedant and the parliamentarian who
resented their interference.

Nor did their princely manner fail of its effect upon their victims.  The game was played upon either side with a crupulous respect for a potent,  nwritten, law. A gaily attired, superbly mounted ighwayman would hold up a coach packed with armed men, and take a urse from each,though a vigorous remonstrance might have carried him to Tyburn.But the traveller knew his place: he did what was expected of him in the best of tempers. Who was he that he should yield in courtesy to the man in the vizard?  As it was monstrous for the one to discharge his pistol, so the other could not resist without committing an outrage upon tradition.