Madonna, and their "ribbons, chains, and
sashes"! But did you ever see a convoy
of brigand prisoners brought into Rome
through the Porta del Popolo by the Pope's
dragoons? In a waggon, on Indian corn
straw, and perhaps with a few leafy boughs
humanely arched over them to keep away
the flies (if the captives be badly wounded),
sprawl half a dozen incredibly horrible and
miserable creatures, chained hand and foot,
their lean bodies half draped in greasy
tatters. They are unshaven and unkempt, blood
has dried upon their faces, foam has dried
upon their lips; and foul clouts, in lieu of the
perky peaked hats with the streaming
ribbons, are bound around their heads. Now
and again they begin to growl and wriggle
and kick, in the straw, like the cubs of
some wild beast in a den; and then the
Pope's dragoons ride up and hit them
sounding thwacks with the flat of their
sabres. It is quite as probable that Claude
du Val, the ladies' highwayman, who is
just now taking the town with comic
songs and breakdowns at a London theatre
(the rascal, as every student of the
Newgate Calendar knows, was a turned-off
lacquey of the Duchess of Cleveland's)
was just as deplorable and repulsive a
ragamufiin as any one of these
tatterdemalions on the maize stalks. As for
Jack Sheppard, I bought a contemporary
etching of him lately as he sat in the
condemned hold in Newgate, shackled and
padlocked to the floor, and with I know not
how many hundredweight of iron on his
wrists and ankles. The etching is not a
flattering one. He looks the vulgar, gin-
drinking housebreaker that he was, and a
very different Jack Sheppard from the trim
little figure in loud clothes and silk stockings
who used to fascinate us at the
Theatre Royal, Adelphi. A hundred years
hence, perhaps, at the Theatre Royal,
Salisbury Plain (one of the suburbs of London,
within five minutes' balloon, journey of the
Bank), Bill Bodger of Flower-and-Dean-
street, Spitalfields, now lying in Newgate
awaiting the advent of Mr. Calcraft, in
connexion with that little affair in the
Minories, and his jumping on the old lady
aged seventy-three, and robbing her after
death of a five-pound note and a set of
false teeth, may appear as Bodger the
brave, the Hero of the East-end. Miss
Tightlegs may enact Bill, and her shorts
and ankle jacks may entrance the town.

It is but due to the Mexican caballero to
admit that he has one advantage over his
European brothers in blackguardism. He
is a first-rate horseman, and his movements,
when mounted, being necessarily rapid and
shifting, you lose sight of his rags and his
dirt in the picturesqueness of his ensemble.
His business, in nine cases out of ten (at
least, this was the case in 1864), is to rob the
stage coach, or to connive at the robbery,
and foregather with the robbers thereof;
but, astride on his nag in his high demi-
pique saddle, with his lasso wound round
the cantel, and his long lance with its
gay-coloured pennon sticking from one of
his stirrups, the fellow has something semi-
military about him. He becomes a member
of some very irregular corps of very irregular
cavalry. You may ask why the French,
while in military occupation of Mexico,
permitted these hordes of savage-looking
vagabonds and the majority of their number
were really as savage as they looked to
ride, armed to the teeth, through the streets
of the towns they held, and into their very
barrack-yards? The answer is simple.
Why did they not disarm the well-affected
population, in order to prevent them from
becoming disaffected? They could not
help themselves. If you went to a whist
party at a friend's house in Mexico after
nightfall, you took care to walk in the
middle of the roadway when you returned
home, and with a loaded revolver in each
hand, lest robbery and assassination should
be lurking in the doorways. I went to a
little Protestant church, once, among the
mountains in the great silver-mining
district of Aral del Mente. We were
escorted, having ladies with us, by a troop
of lancers: gentlemen who had once been
highwaymen, but who were now paid by
the mining company a dollar a day and
the keep of a horse, each, to be honest
and protect travellers. As we entered
the pretty little place of worship, the
congregation left their revolvers and sabres
and Sharpe's rifles on the vestry-room
table, to shoulder or buckle them on again
after the benediction. And, on returning
to Mexico, to attend a grand dinner and
ball, our departure was delayed for some
time because the brass field-piece which
was to form part of our equipment was
not quite ready. Thus the peaceable and
honest were compelled to arm, in order to
repel the onslaughts of the bloodthirsty
and dishonest. The French had scarcely
any light cavalry, and, to patrol the roads
and scour the countiy of the guerrilleros,
were fain to employ native mercenaries.
It was the principle of setting thieves to
catch thieves, but very frequently Marshal