successful thieves.
Perhaps both these causes combine to invest their career with charms in
the popular eye. Almost every country in Europe has its traditional thief,
whose exploits are recorded with all the graces of poetry, and whose
trespasses

"Are cited up in rhymes,
And sung by children in succeeding tunes."[45]

[45] Shakspeare's _Rape of Lucretia_.

Those travellers who have made national manners and characteristics their
peculiar study, have often observed and remarked upon this feeling. The
learned Abbe le Blanc, who resided for some time in England at the
commencement of the eighteenth century, says, in his amusing letters on
the English and French nations, that he continually met with Englishmen
who were not less vain in boasting of the success of their highwaymen than
of the bravery of their troops. Tales of their address, their cunning, or
their generosity, were in the mouths of every body, and a noted thief was
a kind of hero in high repute. He adds that the mob, in all countries,
being easily moved, look in general with concern upon criminals going to
the gallows; but an English mob looked upon such scenes with extraordinary
interest: they delighted to see them go through their last trials with
resolution, and applauded those who were insensible enough to die as they
had lived, braving the justice both of God and men: such, he might have
added, as the noted robber Macpherson, of whom the old ballad says:

"Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dauntingly gaed he:
He played a spring, and danced it round
Beneath the gallows tree."

Among these traditional thieves the most noted in England, or perhaps in
any country, is Robin Hood, a name which popular affection has encircled
with a peculiar halo. "He robbed the rich to give to the poor;" and his
reward has been an immortality of fame, a tithe of which would be thought
more than sufficient to recompense a benefactor of his species. Romance
and poetry have been emulous to make him all their own; and the forest of
Sherwood, in which he roamed with his merry men, armed with their long
bows, and clad in Lincoln green, has become the resort of pilgrims, and a
classic spot sacred to his memory. The few virtues he had, which would
have ensured him no praise if he had been an honest man, have been
blazoned forth by popular renown during seven successive centuries, and
will never be forgotten while the English tongue e