Excerpt from The Lives and Exploits of Banditti and Robbers: In All Parts of the World Before the reader proceeds further, I will warn him, that he will not find my robbers such romantic, gene rous characters, as those that occasionally figure in the fields of fiction. He will meet with men strangers to that virtuous violence of robbing the rich to give to the poor. They give to the poor indeed, but it is as spies and instruments of their own crimes, or at least in order to induce the poor to remain passive while they carry on their work of depredation against the rich. It could scarcely be deemed great liberality in men, who, fresh from the easy plunder of a treasure, should scatter a few dollars among the needy peasantry, but even these few dollars are given from motives directly selfish. I shall have one touching trait to offer of a robber of the Abruzzi, who respected the person and property not only of a poet but of the poet's companions, who fell into his hands but among Italian banditti, I never could hear of a Robin Hood, and still less of a refined metaphysical Robber Moor, that high-minded, romantic hero, of Schiller, who is driven to bold villainy by the paltry, covert vices of society. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.