Schiller's " Robbers " filled half the youth of Germany
with longings for a predatory life, and the fact is quoted as a proof of his genius. Very inferior writers, however, if we may believe the police reports, exercise precisely the same effect. William Rose- blade, a boy of thirteen, very "sharp and intelligent," was charged on Monday with stealing ten pounds from his em- ployer. The constable who arrested him found on him a pistol and powder, and the lad told him that he belonged to a gipsy band who robbed upon Woking Common, and his duty if the victims were violent was to shoot them, which he had done in several instances. He was, however, tired of murder, and wanted to go to sea and be a buccaneer. The child's head had been turned, it appeared, by reading stories of Dick Tmpin and the pirates, which he " liked very much." The magis- trate ordered him a month's imprisonment and a good flogging, which is exactly the discipline he ought to have had at home, and the papers have treated the public to essays on the effects of cheap literature. The fact is that the stories of highwaymen were cheap fifty years ago, and have been cheap ever since, and the only differ- ence is the cheapness of healthier reading. The logical deduction from such theories is not that books should not be cheap, but that the people should not learn to read for fear they should misuse the knowledge. We thought the world was beginning to dis- believe in the moral utility of ignorance ; but of all lessons the hardest to learn is that of judging by the balance of results, not by isolated failures.
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