Saint Nicholas, however, the English “Old Nick,” is in all countries the patron of schoolboys, thieves, or, as Shakspere calls them, “Saint Nicholas’s clerks.” “Keep thy neck for the hangman, for I know thou worshippest St. Nicholas as a man of falsehood may;” and like him, Santu Diavolu, Santu Diavoluni, Holy Devil, is the appropriate saint of the Sicilian bandit. San Dimas, the “good thief,” is a great saint in Andalucia, where his disciples are said to be numerous. A celebrated carving by Montañes, in Seville, is called ‘_El Cristo, del buen ladron_,’--“the Christ, _of_ the good thief;” thus making the Saviour a subordinate person. Spanish robbers have always been remarkably good Roman Catholics. In the Rinconete y Cortadillo, the Lurker and Cutpurse of Cervantes, whose Monipodio must have furnished Fagin to Boz, a box is placed before the Virgin, to which each robber contributes, and one remarks that he “robs for the service of God, and for all honest fellows.” Their mountain confessors of the Friar Tuck order, animated by a pious love for dollars when expended in expiatory masses, consider the payment to them of good doubloons such a laudable restitution, such a sincere repentance, as to entitle the contrite culprit to ample absolution, plenary indulgence, and full benefit of clergy. Notwithstanding this, these ungrateful “good thieves” have been known to rob their spiritual pastors and masters, when they catch them on the high road. To return to the saving merit of these talismans. We ourselves suspended to our sheepskin jacket one of the silver medals of Santiago, which are sold to pilgrims at Compostella, and arrived back again to Seville from the long excursion, safe and sound and unpillaged except by _venteros_ and our faithful squire--an auspicious event, which was entirely attributed by the aforesaid dignitary to the intervention vouchsafed by the patron of the Spains to all who wore his order, which thus protects the bearer as a badge does a Thames waterman from a press-gang. [Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]