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