relied
also in the continuance of his good fortune, which had as yet never
deserted him. Possessed of the belief that his hour was not yet come, he
cared little or nothing for any risk he might incur; and though he
might, undoubtedly, have some presentiment of the probable termination
of his career, he never suffered it to militate against his present
enjoyment, which proved that he was no despicable philosopher.

Turpin was the _ultimus Romanorum_, the last of a race, which--we were
almost about to say we regret--is now altogether extinct. Several
successors he had, it is true, but no name worthy to be recorded after
his own. With him expired the chivalrous spirit which animated
successively the bosoms of so many knights of the road; with him died
away that passionate love of enterprise, that high spirit of devotion to
the fair sex, which was first breathed upon the highway by the gay,
gallant Claude Du-Val, the Bayard of the road--_Le filou sans peur et
sans reproche_--but which was extinguished at last by the cord that tied
the heroic Turpin to the remorseless tree. It were a subject well worthy
of inquiry, to trace this decline and fall of the empire of the tobymen
to its remoter causes; to ascertain the why and the wherefore, that with
so many half-pay captains; so many poor curates; so many lieutenants, of
both services, without hopes of promotion; so many penny-a-liners, and
fashionable novelists; so many damned dramatists, and damning critics;
so many Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviewers; so many detrimental brothers,
and younger sons; when there are horses to be hired, pistols to be
borrowed, purses to be taken, and mails are as plentiful as
partridges--it were worth serious investigation, we repeat, to ascertain
why, with the best material imaginable for a new race of highwaymen, we
have none, not even an amateur. Why do not some of these choice spirits
quit the _salons_ of Pall-Mall, and take to the road? the air of the
heath is more bracing and wholesome, we should conceive, than that of
any "hell" whatever, and the chances of success incomparably greater. We
throw out this hint, without a doubt of seeing it followed up. Probably
the solution of our inquiry may be, that the supply is greater than the
demand; that, in the present state of things, embryo highwaymen may be
more abundant than purses; and then, have we not the horse-patrol? With
such an admirably-organized system of conservation, it is vain to
anti