So it is pleasant--_faute de mieux_, as in our current fiction superb worldlings no longer observe to other members of the _élite_,--it is very pleasant to indulge in these sports vicariously through considering the exploits of the Ulenspiegelian rogue who does do these things. And we cannot but rather fondly admire the dashing fellow who commits the pleasure-giving misdemeanors from which we are held back by prudence or by physical limitations. Every country rejoicing in the dubious benefit of a history has, they say, alike its great national hero and its great national thief: and it is a fact that St. George endures in balladry with Robin Hood, St. Denis with Cartouche, St. Andrew with Rob Roy. Then, too, if Belgium yet remembers Tyl Ulenspiegel, Spain has not yet forgotten Guzman d'Alfarache, nor Germany her Schinderhannes, nor Hungary her Schubry. Everywhere through the shadowland of legend canter and gallop--with the gleaming eyes of nocturnal creatures, with a multitudinous tossed shining of steel,--these "squires of the night's body, Diana's foresters, these minions of the moon," whom the prosaic call thieves and highwaymen: and everywhere men have admired and cherished some cunning strong unconquerable rogue. This foible has from the beginning been recognized and shared by the literary artist. It is perhaps one reason (among others) why really reputable persons have always felt, however obscurely, that there is something dangerous in novels; and why the reading of fiction has always been more or less deprecated by all citizens of appreciable elevation and influence. And here the well-thought-of are, very luckily for the literary artist, far more profoundly in the right than ever the well-thought-of have comprehended: for in all polities imaginative literature has tirelessly advocated revolution, by depicting the possibilities of a more pleasure-giving state of affairs; and in his diversions the artist has consistently tended to identify himself with the rogue and the law-breaker. § 28