The idea of a band of brigands showing fight, not only to a posse of sheriffs' officers, but to a detachment, perhaps half a regiment, of soldiers--a band armed with swords, carbines, and pistols; costumed and equipped in a style characteristic of their calling--is one, to comprehend which we must fancy ourselves transported to the mountains of Italy, or the rugged ravines of the Spanish sierras. We even wonder at the existence of such a state of things there; and, until very lately, were loth to believe in it. Your London shopkeeper would not credit the stories of travellers being captured, and retained in captivity until ransomed by their friends--or if they had no friends, shot! Surely the government of the country could rescue them? This was the query usually put by the incredulous. There is now a clearer understanding of such things. The experience of an humble English artist has established the fact: that the whole power of Italy--backed by that of England--has been compelled to make terms with a robber-chief, and pay him the sum of _four thousand pounds_ for the surrender of his painter-prisoner! The shopkeeper, as he sits in the theatre pit, or gazes down from the second tier of boxes, will now take a stronger interest in "Fra Diavolo" than he ever did before. He knows that the devil's brother is a reality, and Mazzaroni something more than a romantic conceit of the author's imagination. But there is a robber of still more picturesque style to which the Englishman cannot give his credibility--a bandit not only armed, costumed, and equipped like the Fra Diavolos and Mazzaronis, but who follows his profession _on horseback_! And not _alone_--like the Turpins and Claude Duvals of our own past times--but trooped along with twenty, fifty, and often a hundred of his fellows! For this equestrian freebooter--the true type of the highwayman--you must seek, in modern times, among the mountains, and upon the plains, of Mexico. There you will find him in full _fanfar_; plying his craft with as much earnestness, and industry, as if it were the most respectable of professions! In the city and its suburbs, brigandage exists in the shape of the _picaron-a-pied_--or "robber on foot"--in short, the _footpad_. In the country it assumes a far more exalted standard--being there elevated to the rank of a regular calling; its practitioners not going in little groups, and afoot--after the fashion of our thieves and garotters--but acting in large organised bands, mounted on magnificent horses, with a discipline almost military! These are the true "bandoleros," sometimes styled _salteadores del camino grande_--"robbers of the great road"--in other words, _highwaymen_.