But not even this brilliant treatment of accessories availed to save the highway from disrepute; indeed, it had become the profitless pursuit of braggarts and loafers, long before the abolition of the stage-coach destroyed its opportunity.  In the meantime, however, the pickpocket was master of his trade.  His strategy was perfect, his sleight of hand as delicate as long, lithe fingers and nimble brains could make it.  He had discarded for ever those clumsy instruments whose use had barred the progress of the Primitives.  The breast-pocket behind the tightest buttoned coat presented no difficulty to his love of research, and he would penetrate the stoutest frieze or the lightest satin, as easily as Jack Sheppard made a hole through Newgate.  His trick of robbery was so simple and yet so successful, that ever since it has remained a tradition.  The collision, the victim’s murmured apology, the hasty scuffle, the booty handed to the aide-de-camp, who is out of sight before the hue and cry can be raised—­such was the policy advocated two hundred years ago; such is the policy pursued to day by the few artists that remain.

Throughout the eighteenth century the art of cly-faking held its own, though its reputation paled in the glamour of the highway.  It culminated in George Barrington, whose vivid genius persuaded him to work alone and to carry off his own booty; it still flourished (in a silver age) when the incomparable Haggart performed his prodigies of skill; even in our prosaic time some flashes of the ancient glory have been seen.  Now and again circumstances have driven it into eclipse.  When the facile sentiment of the Early Victorian Era poised the tear of sympathy upon every trembling eyelid, the most obdurate was forced to provide himself with a silk handkerchief of equal size and value.

Now, a wipe is the easiest booty in the world, and the Artful Dodger might grow rich without the exercise of the smallest skill.  But wipes dwindled, with dwindling sensibility; and once more the pickpocket was forced upon cleverness or extinction.

At the same time the more truculent trade of housebreaking was winning a lesser triumph of its own.  Never, save in the hands of one or two distinguished practitioners, has this clumsy, brutal pursuit taken on the refinement of an art.  Essentially modern, it has generally been pursued in the meanest spirit of gain.  Deacon Brodie clung to it as to a diversion, but he was an amateur, without a clear understanding of his craft’s possibilities.  The sole monarch of housebreakers was Charles Peace.  At a single stride he surpassed his predecessors; nor has the greatest of his imitators been worthy to hand on the candle which he left at the gallows.  For the rest, there is small distinction in breaking windows, wielding crowbars, and battering the brains of defenceless old gentlemen.  And it is to such miserable tricks as this that he who two centuries since rode abroad in all the glory of