'
A few other quotations may be deemed worthy of republication, although
some of them may have no direct or important bearing. The audacity of
highway robbers at this period is known to everybody. The following,
dated December 21, 1765, gives a tolerably correct idea of the usual
style adopted by those gentlemen of the road:--'Thursday, the Leeds
and Leicester stage-coaches were stopped on Finchley Common by a
highwayman, who took from the passengers a considerable sum of money.
A nobleman's cook, a young woman about twenty-five, declared she would
not be robbed, when the highwayman, admiring her courage, let her
alone. He broke the coach-glass with his pistol, and gave the coachman
half-a-crown to get it mended.' News from London, dated January 9,
1765, says: 'Early on Tuesday morning, a member of parliament, on his
return home in a chair to his house in New Palace Yard, was stopped
and robbed by a single footpad of his purse, in which were sixty-three
guineas.'
About the same time, we are informed that 'the celebrated J.J.
Rousseau hath for the present taken up his residence at a friend's
house in Putney.'--The number for October 26, 1765, contains an
advertisement of a 'beggar's stand' (copied from the _Public
Advertiser_), 'to be let, in a charitable neighbourhood. Income, about
30s. a week.'
The following reference to our acquaintances, the Sikhs, now
sufficiently well known, is curious, as it is doubtless one of their
first appearances in the columns of the English press.
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