A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS By Charles Whibley To the Greeks FOOLISHNESS I desire to thank the Proprietors of the 'National Observer, ' the'New Review, ' the 'Pall Mall Gazette, ' and 'Macmillan's Magazine, ' forcourteous permission to reprint certain chapters of this book. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CAPTAIN HIND MOLL CUTPURSE AND JONATHAN WILD I. MOLL CUTPURSE II. JONATHAN WILD III. A PARALLEL RALPH BRISCOE GILDEROY AND SIXTEEN-STRING JACK I. GILDEROY II. SIXTEEN-STRING JACK III. A PARALLEL THOMAS PURENEY SHEPPARD AND CARTOUCHE I. JACK SHEPPARD II. LOUIS-DOMINIQUE CARTOUCHE III. A PARALLEL VAUX GEORGE BARRINGTON THE SWITCHER AND GENTLEMAN HARRY I. THE SWITCHER II. GENTLEMAN HARRY III. A PARALLEL DEACON BRODIE AND CHARLES PEACE I. DEACON BRODIE II. CHARLES PEACE III. A PARALLEL THE MAN IN THE GREY SUIT MONSIEUR L'ABBÉ INTRODUCTION There are other manifestations of greatness than to relieve suffering orto wreck an empire. Julius Cæsar and John Howard are not the only heroeswho have smiled upon the world. In the supreme adaptation of means to anend there is a constant nobility, for neither ambition nor virtue isthe essential of a perfect action. How shall you contemplate withindifference the career of an artist whom genius or good guidancehas compelled to exercise his peculiar skill, to indulge his fineraptitudes? A masterly theft rises in its claim to respect high above thereprobation of the moralist. The scoundrel, when once justice is quitof him, has a right to be appraised by his actions, not by theireffect; and he dies secure in the knowledge that he is commonly moredistinguished, if he be less loved, than his virtuous contemporaries. While murder is wellnigh as old as life, property and the pocketinvented theft, late-born among the arts. It was not until avaricehad devised many a cunning trick for the protection of wealth, untilcivilisation had multiplied the forms of portable property, thatthieving became a liberal and an elegant profession. True, in pastoralsociety, the lawless man was eager to lift cattle, to break down thebarrier between robbery and warfare. But the contrast is as sharpbetween the savagery of the ancient reiver and the polished performanceof Captain Hind as between the daub of the pavement and the perfectionof Velasquez. So long as the Gothic spirit governed Europe, expressing itself inuseless ornament and wanton brutality, the more delicate crafts hadno hope of exercise. Even the adventurer upon the road threatened hisvictim with a bludgeon, nor was it until the breath of the Renaissancehad vivified the world that a gentleman and an artist could face thetraveller with a courteous demand for his purse. But the age whichwitnessed the enterprise of Drake and the triumph of Shakespeare knewalso the prowess of the highwayman and the dexterity of the cutpurse. Though the art displayed all the freshness and curiosity of theprimitives, still it was art. With Gamaliel Ratsey, who demanded ascene from Hamlet of a rifled player, and who could not rob a Cambridgescholar without bidding him deliver an oration in a wood, theftwas already better than a vulgar extortion. Moll Cutpurse, whoseintelligence and audacity were never bettered, was among the bravest ofthe Elizabethans. Her temperament was as large and as reckless asBen Jonson's own. Neither her tongue nor her courage knew the curb ofmodesty, and she was the first to reduce her craft to a set of wise andimperious rules. She it was who discovered the secret of discipline, and who insisted that every member of her gang should undertake no otherenterprise than that for which nature had framed him. Thus she made easythe path for that other hero, of whom you are told that his band wasmade up 'of several sorts of wicked artists, of whom he made severaluses, according as he perceived which way every man's particular talentlay. ' This statesman--Thomas Dun was his name--drew up for the use ofhis comrades a stringent and stately code, and he was wont to deliveran address to all novices concerning the art and mystery of robbingupon the highway. Under auspices so brilliant, thievery could not butflourish, and when the Stuarts sat upon the throne it was already liftedabove the level of questioning experiment. Every art is shaped by its material, and with the variations of itsmaterial it must perforce vary. If the skill of the cutpurse compelledthe invention of the pocket, it is certain that the rare difficultiesof the pocket created the miraculous skill of those crafty fingers whichwere destined to empty it. And as increased obstacles are perfection'sbest incentive, a finer cunning grew out of the fresh precaution. History does not tell us who it was that discovered this new continentof roguery. Those there are who give the credit to the valiant MollCutpurse; but though the Roaring Girl had wit to conceive a thousandstrange enterprises, she had not the hand to carry them out, and thefirst pickpocket must needs have been a man of action. Moreover, hernickname suggests the more ancient practice, and it is wiser to yieldthe credit to Simon Fletcher, whose praises are chanted by the earlyhistorians. Now, Simon, says his biographer, was 'looked upon to be the greatestartist of his age by all his contemporaries. ' The son of a bakerin Rosemary Lane, he early deserted his father's oven for a life ofadventure; and he claims to have been the first collector who, stealingthe money, yet left the case. The new method was incomparably moresubtle than the old: it afforded an opportunity of a hitherto unimagineddelicacy; the wielders of the scissors were aghast at a skill which puttheir own clumsiness to shame, and which to a previous generation wouldhave seemed the wildest fantasy. Yet so strong is habit, that evenwhen the picking of pockets was a recognised industry, the superfluousscissors still survived, and many a rogue has hanged upon the Treebecause he attempted with a vulgar implement such feats as his unaidedforks had far more easily accomplished. But, despite the innovation of Simon Fletcher, the highway was the gloryof Elizabeth, the still greater glory of the Stuarts. 'The Lacedæmonianswere the only people, ' said Horace Walpole, 'except the English who seemto have put robbery on a right foot. ' And the English of the seventeenthcentury need fear the rivalry of no Lacedæmonian. They were, indeed, the most valiant and graceful robbers that the world has ever known. The Civil War encouraged their profession, and, since many of them hadfought for their king, a proper hatred of Cromwell sharpened their wits. They were scholars as well as gentlemen; they tempered their sport witha merry wit; their avarice alone surpassed their courtesy; and theyrobbed with so perfect a regard for the proprieties that it was only thepedant and the parliamentarian who resented their interference. Nor did their princely manner fail of its effect upon their victims. Themiddle of the seventeenth century was the golden age, not only of therobber, but of the robbed. The game was played upon either side with ascrupulous respect for a potent, if unwritten, law. Neither might norright was permitted to control the issue. A gaily attired, superblymounted highwayman would hold up a coach packed with armed men, and takea purse from each, though a vigorous remonstrance might have carried himto Tyburn. But the traveller knew his place: he did what was expected ofhim in the best of tempers. Who was he that he should yield in courtesyto the man in the vizard? As it was monstrous for the one to dischargehis pistol, so the other could not resist without committing an outrageupon tradition. One wonders what had been the result if some mannerlessreformer had declined his assailant's invitation and drawn his sword. Maybe the sensitive art might have died under this sharp rebuff. Butnone save regicides were known to resist, and their resistance was nevermore forcible than a volley of texts. Thus the High-toby-crack swaggeredit with insolent gaiety, knowing no worse misery than the fear of theTree, so long as he followed the rules of his craft. But let a touch ofbrutality disgrace his method, and he appealed in vain for sympathy orindulgence. The ruffian, for instance, of whom it is grimly recordedthat he added a tie-wig to his booty, neither deserved nor received thesmallest consideration. Delivered to justice, he speedily met the deathhis vulgarity merited, and the road was taught the salutary lesson thatwigs were as sacred as trinkets hallowed by association. With the eighteenth century the highway fell upon decline. No doubt inits silver age, the century's beginning, many a brilliant deed was done. Something of the old policy survived, and men of spirit still went uponthe pad. But the breadth of the ancient style was speedily forgotten;and by the time the First George climbed to the throne, robberywas already a sordid trade. Neither side was conscious of its nobleobligation. The vulgar audacity of a bullying thief was suitablyanswered by the ungracious, involuntary submission of the terrifiedtraveller. From end to end of England you might hear the cry of 'Standand deliver. ' Yet how changed the accent! The beauty of gesture, thedeference of carriage, the ready response to a legitimate demand--allthe qualities of a dignified art were lost for ever. As its professorsincreased in number, the note of aristocracy, once dominant, wassilenced. The meanest rogue, who could hire a horse, might cut acontemptible figure on Bagshot Heath, and feel no shame at robbinga poor man. Once--in that Augustan age, whose brightest ornamentwas Captain Hind--it was something of a distinction to be decentlyplundered. A century later there was none so humble but he might beasked to empty his pocket. In brief, the blight of democracy was uponwhat should have remained a refined, secluded art; and nowise is thedecay better illustrated than in the appreciation of bunglers, whoseexploits were scarce worth a record. James Maclaine, for instance, was the hero of his age. In a historyof cowards he would deserve the first place, and the 'GentlemanHighwayman, ' as he was pompously styled, enjoyed a triumph denied tomany a victorious general. Lord Mountford led half White's to do himhonour on the day of his arrest. On the first Sunday, which he spent inNewgate, three thousand jostled for entrance to his cell, and thepoor devil fainted three times at the heat caused by the throng of hisadmirers. So long as his fate hung in the balance, Walpole could nottake up his pen without a compliment to the man, who claimed to haverobbed him near Hyde Park. Yet a more pitiful rascal never showed thewhite feather. Not once was he known to take a purse with his own hand, the summit of his achievement being to hold the horses' heads while hisaccomplice spoke with the passengers. A poltroon before his arrest, inCourt he whimpered and whinnied for mercy; he was carried to the cartpallid and trembling, and not even his preposterous finery availed tohearten him at the gallows. Taxed with his timidity, he attempted toexcuse himself on the inadmissible plea of moral rectitude. 'I have asmuch personal courage in an honourable cause, ' he exclaimed in a passageof false dignity, 'as any man in Britain; but as I knew I was committingacts of injustice, so I went to them half loth and half consenting; andin that sense I own I am a coward indeed. ' The disingenuousness of this proclamation is as remarkable as itshypocrisy. Well might he brag of his courage in an honourable cause, when he knew that he could never be put to the test. But what palliationshall you find for a rogue with so little pride in his art, that heexercised it 'half loth, half consenting'? It is not in this recreantspirit that masterpieces are achieved, and Maclaine had better havestayed in the far Highland parish, which bred him, than have attemptedto cut a figure in the larger world of London. His famous encounter withWalpole should have covered him with disgrace, for it was ignoble atevery point; and the art was so little understood, that it merely addeda leaf to his crown of glory. Now, though Walpole was far too well-bredto oppose the demand of an armed stranger, Maclaine, in defiance ofhis craft, discharged his pistol at an innocent head. True, he wrotea letter of apology, and insisted that, had the one pistol-shot provedfatal, he had another in reserve for himself. But not even Walpole wouldhave believed him, had not an amiable faith given him an opportunity forthe answering quip: 'Can I do less than say I will be hanged if he is?' As Maclaine was a coward and no thief, so also he was a snob and nogentleman. His boasted elegance was not more respectable than his art. Fine clothes are the embellishment of a true adventurer; they hang illon the sloping shoulders of a poltroon. And Maclaine, with all the ostensible weaknesses of his kind, wouldclaim regard for the strength that he knew not. He occupied a costlyapartment in St. James's Street; his morning dress was a crimson damaskbanjam, a silk shag waistcoat, trimmed with lace, black velvet breeches, white silk stockings, and yellow morocco slippers; but since hismagnificence added no jot to his courage, it was rather mean thanadmirable. Indeed, his whole career was marred by the provincialism ofhis native manse. And he was the adored of an intelligent age; he basked a few brief weeksin the noonday sun of fashion. If distinction was not the heritage of the Eighteenth Century, its gloryis that now and again a giant raised his head above the stature of aprevailing rectitude. The art of verse was lost in rhetoric; the nobleprose, invented by the Elizabethans, and refined under the Stuarts, waswhittled away to common sense by the admirers of Addison and Steele. Swift and Johnson, Gibbon and Fielding, were apparitions of strengthin an amiable, ineffective age. They emerged sudden from the impeccablegreyness, to which they afforded an heroic contrast. So, while thehighway drifted--drifted to a vulgar incompetence, the craft wasillumined by many a flash of unexpected genius. The brilliantachievements of Jonathan Wild and of Jack Sheppard might have relievedthe gloom of the darkest era, and their separate masterpieces make someatonement for the environing cowardice and stupidity. Above all, theEighteenth Century was Newgate's golden age; now for the first time andthe last were the rules and customs of the Jug perfectly understood. If Jonathan the Great was unrivalled in the art of clapping his enemiesinto prison, if Jack the Slip-string was supreme in the rarer art ofgetting himself out, even the meanest criminal of his time knew whatwas expected of him, so long as he wandered within the walled yard, orlistened to the ministrations of the snuff-besmirched Ordinary. He mightshow a lamentable lack of cleverness in carrying off his booty; he mightprove a too easy victim to the wiles of the thief-catcher; but he neverfell short of courage, when asked to sustain the consequences of hiscrime. Newgate, compared by one eminent author to a university, by another toa ship, was a republic, whose liberty extended only so far as its irondoor. While there was no liberty without, there was licence within; andif the culprit, who paid for the smallest indiscretion with his neck, understood the etiquette of the place, he spent his last weeks in anorgie of rollicking lawlessness. He drank, he ate, he diced; hereceived his friends, or chaffed the Ordinary; he attempted, throughthe well-paid cunning of the Clerk, to bribe the jury; and when everyartifice had failed he went to Tyburn like a man. If he knew not how tolive, at least he would show a resentful world how to die. 'In no country, ' wrote Sir T. Smith, a distinguished lawyer of the time, 'do malefactors go to execution more intrepidly than in England'; andassuredly, buoyed up by custom and the approval of their fellows, Wild'svictims made a brave show at the gallows. Nor was their bravery theresult of a common callousness. They understood at once the humour andthe delicacy of the situation. Though hitherto they had chaffed theOrdinary, they now listened to his exhortation with at least a semblanceof respect; and though their last night upon earth might have beendevoted to a joyous company, they did not withhold their ear from theBellman's Chant. As twelve o'clock approached--their last midnight uponearth--they would interrupt the most spirited discourse, they wouldcheck the tour of the mellowest bottle to listen to the solemn doggerel. 'All you that in the condemn'd hole do lie, ' groaned the Bellman ofSt. Sepulchre's in his duskiest voice, and they who held revel inthe condemned hole prayed silence of their friends for the familiarcadences: All you that in the condemn'd hole do lie, Prepare you, for to-morrow you shall die, Watch all and pray, the hour is drawing near, That you before th' Almighty must appear. Examine well yourselves, in time repent That you may not t' eternal flames be sent; And when St. Pulchre's bell to-morrow tolls, The Lord above have mercy on your souls. Past twelve o'clock! Even if this warning voice struck a momentary terror into theiroffending souls, they were up betimes in the morning, eager to pay theirfinal debt. Their journey from Newgate to Tyburn was a triumph, andtheir vanity was unabashed at the droning menaces of the Ordinary. Atone point a chorus of maidens cast wreaths upon their way, or pinnednosegays in their coats, that they might not face the executionerunadorned. At the Crown Tavern they quaffed their last glass of ale, andtold the landlord with many a leer and smirk that they would pay him ontheir way back. Though gravity was asked, it was not always given; butin the Eighteenth Century courage was seldom wanting. To the commoncitizen a violent death was (and is) the worst of horrors; to theancient highwayman it was the odd trick lost in the game of life. Andthe highwayman endured the rope, as the practised gambler loses hisestate, without blenching. One there was, who felt his leg tremble inhis own despite: wherefore he stamped it upon the ground so violently, that in other circumstances he would have roared with pain, and he leftthe world without a tremor. In this spirit Cranmer burnt his recreantright hand, and in either case the glamour of a unique occasion was astimulus to courage. But not even this brilliant treatment of accessories availed to save thehighway from disrepute; indeed, it had become the profitless pursuitof braggarts and loafers, long before the abolition of the stage-coachdestroyed its opportunity. In the meantime, however, the pickpocket wasmaster of his trade. His strategy was perfect, his sleight of hand asdelicate as long, lithe fingers and nimble brains could make it. He haddiscarded for ever those clumsy instruments whose use had barred theprogress of the Primitives. The breast-pocket behind the tightestbuttoned coat presented no difficulty to his love of research, and hewould penetrate the stoutest frieze or the lightest satin, as easily asJack Sheppard made a hole through Newgate. His trick of robbery wasso simple and yet so successful, that ever since it has remained atradition. The collision, the victim's murmured apology, the hastyscuffle, the booty handed to the aide-de-camp, who is out of sightbefore the hue and cry can be raised--such was the policy advocated twohundred years ago; such is the policy pursued to day by the few artiststhat remain. Throughout the eighteenth century the art of cly-faking held its own, though its reputation paled in the glamour of the highway. It culminatedin George Barrington, whose vivid genius persuaded him to work alone andto carry off his own booty; it still flourished (in a silver age) whenthe incomparable Haggart performed his prodigies of skill; even in ourprosaic time some flashes of the ancient glory have been seen. Nowand again circumstances have driven it into eclipse. When the facilesentiment of the Early Victorian Era poised the tear of sympathy uponevery trembling eyelid, the most obdurate was forced to provide himselfwith a silk handkerchief of equal size and value. Now, a wipe is the easiest booty in the world, and the Artful Dodgermight grow rich without the exercise of the smallest skill. But wipesdwindled, with dwindling sensibility; and once more the pickpocket wasforced upon cleverness or extinction. At the same time the more truculent trade of housebreaking was winninga lesser triumph of its own. Never, save in the hands of one or twodistinguished practitioners, has this clumsy, brutal pursuit taken onthe refinement of an art. Essentially modern, it has generally beenpursued in the meanest spirit of gain. Deacon Brodie clung to it as toa diversion, but he was an amateur, without a clear understanding ofhis craft's possibilities. The sole monarch of housebreakers was CharlesPeace. At a single stride he surpassed his predecessors; nor has thegreatest of his imitators been worthy to hand on the candle whichhe left at the gallows. For the rest, there is small distinctionin breaking windows, wielding crowbars, and battering the brains ofdefenceless old gentlemen. And it is to such miserable tricks as thisthat he who two centuries since rode abroad in all the glory of theHigh-toby-splice descends in these days of avarice and stupidity. Thelegislators who decreed that henceforth the rope should be reserved forthe ultimate crime of murder were inspired with a proper sense of humourand proportion. It would be ignoble to dignify that ugly enterprise ofto-day, the cracking of suburban cribs, with the same punishment whichwas meted out to Claude Duval and the immortal Switcher. Better for thechurl the disgrace of Portland than the chance of heroism and respectgiven at the Tree! And where are the heroes whose art was as glorious as their intrepidity?One and all they have climbed the ascent of Tyburn. One and all, they have leaped resplendent from the cart. The world, which was the joyous playground of highwaymen and pickpockets, is nowthe Arcadia of swindlers. The man who once went forth to meet his equalon the road, now plunders the defenceless widow or the foolish clergymanfrom the security of an office. He has changed Black Bess for abrougham, his pistol for a cigar; a sleek chimney-pot sits upon thehead, which once carried a jaunty hat, three-cornered; spats havereplaced the tops of ancient times; and a heavy fur coat advertises atonce the wealth and inaction of the modern brigand. No longer does heroam the heaths of Hounslow or Bagshot; no longer does he track thegrazier to a country fair. Fearful of an encounter, he chooses for thefields of his enterprise the byways of the City, and the advertisementcolumns of the smugly Christian Press. He steals without risking hisskin or losing his respectability. The suburb, wherein he brings upa blameless, flat-footed family, regards him as its most renownedbenefactor. He is generally a pillar (or a buttress) of the Church, andoftentimes a mayor; with his ill-gotten wealth he promotes charities, and endows schools; his portrait is painted by a second-rateAcademician, and hangs, until disaster overtakes him, in the town-hallof his adopted borough. How much worse is he than the High-toby-cracks of old! They were asbrave as lions; he is a very louse for timidity. His conduct is meanerthan the conduct of the most ruffianly burglar that ever worked acentre-bit. Of art he has not the remotest inkling: though his greedis bounded by the Bank of England, he understands not the elegancies oflife; he cares not how he plumps his purse, so long as it be full; andif he were capable of conceiving a grand effect, he would willinglysurrender it for a pocketed half-crown. This side the Channel, in brief, romance and the picturesque are dead; and in France, the last refuge ofcrime, there are already signs of decay. The Abbé Bruneau caught a whiffof style and invention from the past. That other Abbé--Rosslot was hisname--shone forth a pure creator: he owed his prowess to the example ofnone. But in Paris crime is too often passionel, and a crime passionelis a crime with a purpose, which, like the novel with a purpose, isconceived by a dullard, and carried out for the gratification of themiddle-class. To whitewash the scoundrel is to put upon him the heaviest dishonour: adishonour comparable only to the monstrously illogical treatment ofthe condemned. When once a hero has forfeited his right to comfort andfreedom, when he is deemed no longer fit to live upon earth, the PrisonChaplain, encouraging him to a final act of hypocrisy, gives him a freepass (so to say) into another and more exclusive world. So, too, themoralist would test the thief by his own narrow standard, forgettingthat all professions are not restrained by the same code. The road hasits ordinances as well as the lecture-room; and if the thief is commonlya bad moralist, it is certain that no moralist was ever a great thief. Why then detract from a man's legitimate glory? Is it not wiser torespect 'that deep intuition of oneness, ' which Coleridge says is 'atthe bottom of our faults as well as our virtues?' To recognise thata fault in an honest man is a virtue in a scoundrel? After all, heis eminent who, in obedience to his talent, does prodigies of valourunrivalled by his fellows. And none has so many opportunities of variouseminence as the scoundrel. The qualities which may profitably be applied to a cross lifeare uncommon and innumerable. It is not given to all men to belight-brained, light-limbed, light-fingered. A courage which shall facean enemy under the starlight, or beneath the shadow of a wall, whichshall track its prey to a well-defended lair, is far rarer than alaw-abiding cowardice. The recklessness that risks all for a presentadvantage is called genius, if a victorious general urge it to success;nor can you deny to the intrepid Highwayman, whose sudden resolutiontriumphs at an instant of peril, the possession of an admirable gift. But all heroes have not proved themselves excellent at all points. Thisone has been distinguished for the courtly manner of his attack, thatother for a prescience which discovers booty behind a coach-door orwithin the pocket of a buttoned coat. If Cartouche was a master ofstrategy, Barrington was unmatched in another branch; and each may claimthe credit due to a peculiar eminence. It is only thus that you maymeasure conflicting talents: as it were unfair to judge a poet by abrief experiment in prose, so it would be monstrous to cheapen theaccomplishments of a pickpocket, because he bungled at the concealmentof his gains. A stern test of artistry is the gallows. Perfect behaviour at anenforced and public scrutiny may properly be esteemed an effect oftalent--an effect which has not too often been rehearsed. There is noreason why the Scoundrel, fairly beaten at the last point in the game, should not go to his death without swagger and without remorse. Atleast he might comfort himself with such phrases as 'a dance without themusic, ' and he has not often been lacking in courage. What he has missedis dignity: his pitfalls have been unctuosity, on the one side, bravadoon the other. It was the Prison Ordinary, who first misled him into theassumption of a piety which neither preacher nor disciple understood. Itwas the Prison Ordinary, who persuaded him to sign his name to alying confession of guilt, drawn up in accordance with a foolish andinexorable tradition, and to deliver such a last dying speech as wouldnot disappoint the mob. The set phrases, the vain prayer offered for other sinners, thehypocritical profession of a superior righteousness, were neither noblenor sincere. When Tom Jones (for instance) was hanged, in 1702, aftera prosperous career on Hounslow Heath, his biographer declared thathe behaved with more than usual 'modesty and decency, ' because he'delivered a pretty deal of good advice to the young men present, exhorting them to be industrious in their several callings. ' Whereashis biographer should have discovered that it is not thus that your truehero bids farewell to frolic and adventure. As little in accordance with good taste was the last appearance of theinfamous Jocelin Harwood, who was swung from the cart in 1692 for murderand robbery. He arrived at Tyburn insolently drunk. He blustered andranted, until the spectators hissed their disapproval, and he diedvehemently shouting that he would act the same murder again in the samecase. Unworthy, also, was the last dying repartee of Samuel Shotland, a notorious bully of the Eighteenth Century. Taking off his shoes, hehurled them into the crowd, with a smirk of delight. 'My father andmother often told me, ' he cried, 'that I should die with my shoes on;but you may all see that I have made them both liars. ' A great man diesnot with so mean a jest, and Tyburn was untouched to mirth by Shotland'sfacile humour. On the other hand, there are those who have given a splendid example ofa brave and dignified death. Brodie was a sorry bungler when at work, but a perfect artist at the gallows. The glory of his last achievementwill never fade. The muttered prayer, unblemished by hypocrisy, the jestthrown at George Smith--a metaphor from the gaming-table--the silentadjustment of the cord which was to strangle him, these last officeswere performed with an unparalleled quietude and restraint. Though hehad pattered the flash to all his wretched accomplices, there was notrace of the last dying speech in his final utterances, and he set anexample of a simple greatness, worthy to be followed even to the endof time. Such is the type, but others also have given proof of a serenetemper. Tom Austin's masterpiece was in another kind, but it was nonethe less a masterpiece. At the very moment that the halter was being putabout his neck, he was asked by the Chaplain what he had to say beforehe died. 'Only, ' says he, 'there's a woman yonder with some curds andwhey, and I wish I could have a pennyworth of them before I am hanged, because I don't know when I shall see any again. ' There is a braveirrelevance in this very human desire, which is beyond praise. Valiant also was the conduct of Roderick Audrey, who after a brief butbrilliant career paid his last debt to the law in 1714. He was but sixteen, and, says his biographer, 'he went very decent tothe gallows, being in a white waistcoat, clean napkin, white gloves, andan orange in one hand. ' So well did he play his part, that one wondersJack Ketch did not shrink from the performance of his. But throughouthis short life, Roderick Audrey--the very name is an echo ofromance!--displayed a contempt for whatever was common or ugly. Not onlywas his appearance at Tyburn a lesson in elegance, but he thieved, as none ever thieved before or since, with no other accomplice than asinging-bird. Thus he would play outside a house, wherein he espied asideboard of plate, and at last, bidding his playmate flutter throughan open window into the parlour, he would follow upon the excuse ofrecovery, and, once admitted, would carry off as much silver as he couldconceal. None other ever attempted so graceful an artifice, and yetAudrey's journey to Tyburn is even more memorable than the story of hisgay accomplice. But it is not only the truly great who have won for themselves anenduring reputation. There are men, not a few, esteemed, like thepopular novelist, not for their art but for some foolish gift, somefacile trick of notoriety, whose actions have tickled the fancy, not theunderstanding of the world. The coward and the impostor have been setupon a pedestal of glory either by accident or by the whim of posterity. For more than a century Dick Turpin has appeared not so much thegreatest of highwaymen, as the Highwaymen Incarnate. His prowess hasbeen extolled in novels and upon the stage; his ride to York is stillbepraised for a feat of miraculous courage and endurance; the death ofBlack Bess has drawn floods of tears down the most callous cheeks. Andthe truth is that Turpin was never a gentleman of the road at all! BlackBess is as pure an invention as the famous ride to York. The ruffian, who is said to have ridden the phantom mare from one end of England tothe other, was a common butcher, who burned an old woman to death atEpping, and was very properly hanged at York for the stealing of a horsewhich he dared not bestride. Not one incident in his career gives colour to the splendid myth whichhas been woven round his memory. Once he was in London, and he died atYork. So much is true; but there is naught to prove that his progressfrom the one town to the other did not occupy a year. Nor is there anyreason why the halo should have been set upon his head rather than uponanother's. Strangest truth of all, none knows at what moment Dick Turpinfirst shone into glory. At any rate, there is a gap in the tradition, and the chap-books of the time may not be credited with this vulgarerror. Perhaps it was the popular drama of Skelt which put the ruffianupon the black mare's back; but whatever the date of the invention, Turpin was a popular hero long before Ainsworth sent him rattling acrossEngland. And in order to equip this butcher with a false reputation, a valiant officer and gentleman was stripped of the credit due toa magnificent achievement. For though Turpin tramped to York at ajourneyman's leisure, Nicks rode thither at a stretch--Nicks theintrepid and gallant, whom Charles II. , in admiration of his feat, waswont to call Swiftnicks. This valiant collector, whom posterity has robbed for Turpin'sembellishment, lived at the highest moment of his art. He knew by rotethe lessons taught by Hind and Duval; he was a fearless rider and acourteous thief. Now, one morning at five of the clock, he robbed agentleman near Barnet of £560, and riding straight for York, he appearedon the Bowling Green at six in the evening. Being presently recognisedby his victim, he was apprehended, and at the trial which followed hepleaded a triumphant alibi. But vanity was too strong for discretion, and no sooner was Swiftnicks out of danger, than he boasted, as well hemight, of his splendid courage. Forthwith he appeared a popular hero, obtained a commission in Lord Moncastle's regiment, and married afortune. And then came Turpin to filch his glory! Nor need Turpin havestooped to a vicarious notoriety, for he possessed a certain rough, halfconscious humour, which was not despicable. He purchased a new fustiancoat and a pair of pumps, in which to be hanged, and he hired five poormen at ten shillings the day, that his death might not go unmourned. Above all, he was distinguished in prison. A crowd thronged his cellto identify him, and one there was who offered to bet the keeper half aguinea that the prisoner was not Turpin; whereupon Turpin whispered thekeeper, 'Lay him the wager, you fool, and I will go you halves. ' Surelythis impudent indifference might have kept green the memory of the manwho never rode to York! If the Scoundrel may claim distinction on many grounds, his characteris singularly uniform. To the anthropologist he might well appearthe survival of a savage race, and savage also are his manifoldsuperstitions. He is a creature of times and seasons. He chooses theoccasion of his deeds with as scrupulous a care as he examines hisformidable crowbars and jemmies. At certain hours he would refrain fromaction, though every circumstance favoured his success: he would ratherobey the restraining voice of a wise, unreasoning wizardry, than fillhis pockets with the gold for which his human soul is ever hungry. Thereis no law of man he dares not break but he shrinks in horror from theinfringement of the unwritten rules of savagery. Though he might cut athroat in self-defence, he would never walk under a ladder; and if the13th fell on a Friday, he would starve that day rather than obtain aloaf by the method he best understands. He consults the omens with aspatient a divination as the augurs of old; and so long as he carries anamulet in his pocket, though it be but a pebble or a polished nut, he isfilled with an irresistible courage. For him the worst terror of all isthe evil eye, and he would rather be hanged by an unsuspected judge thanreceive an easy stretch from one whose glance he dared not face. Andwhile the anthropologist claims him for a savage, whose civilisation hasbeen arrested at brotherhood with the Solomon Islanders, the politicianmight pronounce him a true communist, in that he has preserved awholesome contempt of property and civic life. The pedant, again, wouldfeel his bumps, prescribe a gentle course of bromide, and hope to cureall the sins of the world by a municipal Turkish bath. The wise man, respecting his superstitions, is content to take him as he finds him, and to deduce his character from his very candid history, which isunaffected by pedant or politician. Before all things, he is sanguine; he believes that Chance, the greatgod of his endeavour, fights upon his side. Whatever is lacking to-day, to-morrow's enterprise will fulfil, and if only the omens be favourable, he fears neither detection nor the gallows. His courage proceeds fromthis sanguine temperament, strengthened by shame and tradition ratherthan from a self-controlled magnanimity; he hopes until despair isinevitable, and then walks firmly to the gallows, that no comrade maysuspect the white feather. His ambition, too, is the ambition of thesavage or of the child; he despises such immaterial advantages as powerand influence, being perfectly content if he have a smart coat on hisback and a bottle of wine at his elbow. He would rather pick a lock thanbatter a constitution, and the world would be well lost, if he and hisdoxy might survey the ruin in comfort. But if his ambition be modest, his love of notoriety is boundless. He must be famous, his name must be in the mouths of men, he must beimmortal (for a week) in a rough woodcut. And then, what matters it howsoon the end? His braveries have been hawked in the street; his prowesshas sold a Special Edition; he is the first of his race, until a luckierrival eclipses him. Thus, also, his dandyism is inevitable: it is notenough for him to cover his nakedness--he must dress; and though histaste is sometimes unbridled, it is never insignificant. Indeed, hisbiographers have recorded the expression of his fancy in coats andsmall-clothes as patiently and enthusiastically as they have applaudedhis courage. And truly the love of magnificence, which he shares withall artists, is sincere and characteristic. When an accomplice ofJonathan Wild's robbed Lady M----n at Windsor, his equipage cost himforty pounds; and Nan Hereford was arrested for shoplifting at the verymoment that four footmen awaited her return with an elegant sedan-chair. His vanity makes him but a prudish lover, who desires to woo less thanto be wooed; and at all times and through all moods he remains theprimeval sentimentalist. He will detach his life entirely from thecatchwords which pretend to govern his actions; he will sit and croonthe most heartrending ditties in celebration of home-life and a mother'slove, and then set forth incontinently upon a well-planned errand ofplunder. For all his artistry, he lacks balance as flagrantly as apopular politician or an advanced journalist. Therefore it is the moreremarkable that in one point he displays a certain caution: he bogglesat a superfluous murder. For all his contempt of property, he stillpreserves a respect for life, and the least suspicion of unnecessarybrutality sets not only the law but his own fellows against him. Likeall men whose god is Opportunity, he is a reckless gambler; and, likeall gamblers, he is monstrously extravagant. In brief, he is a tangle ofpicturesque qualities, which, until our own generation, was incapable ofnothing save dulness. The Bible and the Newgate Calendar--these twain were George Borrow'sfavourite reading, and all save the psychologist and the pedant willapplaud the preference. For the annals of the 'family' are distinguishedby an epic severity, a fearless directness of speech, which you willhardly match outside the Iliad or the Chronicles of the Kings. But theNewgate Calendar did not spring ready-made into being: it is the resultof a curious and gradual development. The chap-books came first, withtheir bold type, their coarse paper, and their clumsy, characteristicwoodcuts--the chap-books, which none can contemplate without anenchanted sentiment. Here at last you come upon a literature, which hasbeen read to pieces. The very rarity of the slim, rough volumes, provesthat they have been handed from one greedy reader to another, until thegreat libraries alone are rich enough to harbour them. They do notboast the careful elegance of a famous press: many of them came from theprinting-office of a country town: yet the least has a simplicity andconcision, which are unknown in this age of popular fiction. Even theirlack of invention is admirable: as the same woodcut might be used torepresent Guy, Earl of Warwick, or the last highwayman who sufferedat Tyburn, so the same enterprise is ascribed with a delightfulingenuousness to all the heroes who rode abroad under the stars to filltheir pockets. The Life and Death of Gamaliel Ratsey delighted England in 1605, andwas the example of after ages. The anecdote of the road was alreadycrystallised, and henceforth the robber was unable to act contrary tothe will of the chap-book. Thus there grew up a folk-lore of thievery:the very insistence upon the same motive suggests the fairytale, and, asin the legends of every country, there is an identical element which theanthropologists call 'human'; so in the annals of adventure there isa set of invariable incidents, which are the essence of thievery. Theindustrious hacks, to whom we owe the entertainment of the chap-books, being seedy parsons or lawyers' clerks, were conscious of their literarydeficiencies: they preferred to obey tradition rather than to inventineptitudes. So you may trace the same jest, the same intrigue throughthe unnumbered lives of three centuries. And if, being a philosopher, you neglect the obvious plagiarism, you may induce from thesesimilarities a cunning theory concerning the uniformity of the humanbrain. But the easier explanation is, as always, the more satisfactory;and there is little doubt that in versatility the thief surpassed hishistorian. Had the chap-books still been scattered in disregarded corners, theywould have been unknown or misunderstood. Happily, a man of geniuscame in the nick to convert them into as vivid and sparkling a pieceof literature as the time could show. This was Captain Alexander Smith, whose Lives of the Highwaymen, published in 1719, was properly describedby its author as 'the first impartial piece of this nature which everappeared in English. ' Now, Captain Smith inherited from a namelessfather no other patrimony than a fierce loyalty to the Stuarts, and thesanguine temperament which views in horror a well-ordered life. Thougha mere foundling, he managed to acquire the rudiments, and he was notwholly unlettered when at eighteen he took to the road. His courage, fortified by an intimate knowledge of the great tradition, was rewardedby an immediate success, and he rapidly became the master of somuch leisure as enabled him to pursue his studies with pleasure anddistinction. When his companions damned him for a milksop, he wasloftily contemptuous, conscious that it was not in intelligence alonethat he was their superior. While the Stuarts were the gods of hisidolatry, while the Regicides were the fiends of his frank abhorrence, it was from the Elizabethans that he caught the splendid vigour of hisstyle; and he owed not only his historical sense, but his living Englishto the example of Philemon Holland. Moreover, it is to his constantglory that, living at a time that preferred as well to attenuate theEnglish tongue as to degrade the profession of the highway, he not onlyrode abroad with a fearless courtesy, but handled his own language withthe force and spirit of an earlier age. He wrote with the authority of courage and experience. A hazardouscareer had driven envy and malice from his dauntless breast. Though heconfesses a debt to certain 'learned and eminent divines of the Churchof England, ' he owed a greater debt to his own observation, and heknew--none better--how to recognise with enthusiasm those deeds ofdaring which only himself has rivalled. A master of etiquette, hedistributed approval and censure with impartial hand; and he wasquick to condemn the smallest infraction of an ancient law. Nor was heinsensible to the dignity of history. The best models were alwaysbefore him. With admirable zeal he studied the manner of such mastersas Thucydides and Titus Livius of Padua. Above all, he realisedthe importance of setting appropriate speeches in the mouths of hischaracters; and, permitting his heroes to speak for themselves, heimparted to his work an irresistible air of reality and good faith. Hisstyle, always studied, was neither too low nor too high for his subject. An ill-balanced sentence was as hateful to him as a foul thrust or astolen advantage. Abroad a craftsman, he carried into the closet the skill and energywhich distinguished him when the moon was on the heath. Though notborn to the arts of peace, he was determined to prove his respect forletters, and his masterpiece is no less pompous in manner than it isestimable in tone and sound in reflection. He handled slang as one whoknew its limits and possibilities, employing it not for the sake ofeccentricity, but to give the proper colour and sparkle to his page;indeed, his intimate acquaintance with the vagabonds of speech enabledhim to compile a dictionary of Pedlar's French, which has been pilferedby a whole battalion of imitators. Moreover, there was none of theproverbs of the pavement, those first cousins of slang, that escapedhim; and he assumed all the licence of the gentleman-collector in thetreatment of his love-passages. Captain Smith took the justest view of his subject. For him robbery, inthe street as on the highway, was the finest of the arts, and he alwaysrevered it for its own sake rather than for vulgar profit. Though, todeceive the public, he abhorred villainy in word, he never concealed hisadmiration in deed of a 'highwayman who robs like a gentleman. ' 'Thereis a beauty in all the works of nature, ' he observes in one of hiswittiest exordia, 'which we are unable to define, though all the worldis convinced of its existence: so in every action and station of lifethere is a grace to be attained, which will make a man pleasing to allabout him and serene in his own mind. ' Some there are, he continues, whohave placed 'this beauty in vice itself; otherwise it is hardly probablethat they could commit so many irregularities with a strong gust andan appearance of satisfaction. ' Notwithstanding that the word 'vice' isused in its conventional sense, we have here the key to Captain Smith'sposition. He judged his heroes' achievements with the intelligentimpartiality of a connoisseur, and he permitted no other prejudice thanan unfailing loyalty to interrupt his opinion. Though he loved good English as he loved good wine, he was never sohappy as when (in imagination) he was tying the legs of a Regicide underthe belly of an ass. And when in the manner of a bookseller's hack hecompiled a Comical and Tragical History of the Lives and Adventures ofthe most noted Bayliffs, adoration of the Royalists persuaded him tomiss his chance. So brave a spirit as himself should not havelooked complacently upon the officers of the law, but he saw inthe glorification of the bayliff another chance of castigating theRoundheads, and thus he set an honorific crown upon the brow of man'snatural enemy. 'These unsanctified rascals, ' wrote he, 'would run intoany man's debt without paying him, and if their creditors were Cavaliersthey thought they had as much right to cheat 'em, as the Israelites hadto spoil the Egyptians of their ear-rings and jewels. ' Alas! the bootwas ever on the other leg; and yet you cannot but admire the Captain'svaliant determination to sacrifice probability to his legitimate hate. Of his declining years and death there is no record. One likes to thinkof him released from care, and surrounded by books, flowers, and thegood things of this earth. Now and again, maybe, he would muse on thestirring deeds of his youth, and more often he would put away the memoryof action to delight in the masterpiece which made him immortal. Hewould recall with pleasure, no doubt, the ready praise of RichardSteele, his most appreciative critic, and smile contemptuously at thebaseness of his friend and successor, Captain Charles Johnson. Now, thisingenious writer was wont to boast, when the ale of Fleet Street hadempurpled his nose, that he was the most intrepid highwayman of themall. 'Once upon a time, ' he would shout, with an arrogant gesture, 'Iwas known from Blackheath to Hounslow, from Ware to Shooter's Hill. 'And the truth is, the only 'crime' he ever committed was plagiarism. The self-assumed title of Captain should have deceived nobody, for thebraggart never stole anything more difficult of acquisition than anotherman's words. He picked brains, not pockets; he committed the greatersin and ran no risk. He helped himself to the admirable inventionsof Captain Smith without apology or acknowledgment, and, as though tolighten the dead-weight of his sin, he never skipped an opportunity ofmaligning his victim. Again and again in the very act to steal he willdeclare vaingloriously that Captain Smith's stories are 'barefacedinventions. ' But doubt was no check to the habit of plunder, and youknew that at every reproach, expressed (so to say) in self-defence, heplied the scissors with the greater energy. The most cunning theft isthe tag which adorns the title-page of his book: Little villains oft submit to fate That great ones may enjoy the world in state. Thus he quotes from Gay, and you applaud the aptness of the quotation, until you discover that already it was used by Steele in hisappreciation of the heroic Smith! However, Johnson has his uses, andthose to whom the masterpiece of Captain Alexander is inaccessible willturn with pleasure to the General History of the lives and adventuresof the most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. , and willfeel no regret that for once they are receiving stolen goods. Though Johnson fell immeasurably below his predecessor in talent, hemanifestly excelled him in scholarship. A sojourn at the University hadsupplied him with a fine assortment of Latin tags, and he delighted toprove his erudition by the citation of the Chronicles. Had he possesseda sense of humour, he might have smiled at the irony of committing atheft upon the historian of thieves. But he was too vain and too pompousto smile at his own weakness, and thus he would pretend himself aventuresome highwayman, a brave writer, and a profound scholar. Indeed, so far did his pride carry him, that he would have the world believehim the same Charles Johnson, who wrote The Gentleman Cully and TheSuccessful Pyrate. Thus with a boastful chuckle he would quote: Johnson, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning, Means not, but blunders round about a meaning Thus, ignoring the insult, he would plume himself after his drunkenfashion that he, too, was an enemy of Pope. Yet Johnson has remained an example. For the literature of scoundrelismis as persistent in its form as in its folk-lore. As Harman's Caveat, which first saw the light in 1566, serves as a model to an unbrokenseries of such books, as The London Spy, so from Johnson in due coursewere developed the Newgate Calendar, and those innumerable records, which the latter half of the Eighteenth Century furnished us forth. The celebrated Calendar was in its origin nothing more than a listof prisoners printed in a folio slip. But thereafter it became theMalefactor's Bloody Register, which we know. Its plan and purpose wereto improve the occasion. The thief is no longer esteemed for an artistor appraised upon his merits: he is the awful warning, which shalllead the sinner to repentance. 'Here, ' says the preface, 'the giddythoughtless youth may see as in a mirror the fatal consequences ofdeviating from virtue'; here he may tremble at the discovery that 'oftenthe best talents are prostituted to the basest purposes. ' But in spiteof 'the proper reflections of the whole affair, ' the famous Calendardeserved the praise of Borrow. There is a directness in the narration, which captures all those for whom life and literature are somethingbetter than psychologic formulæ. Moreover, the motives which drivethe brigand to his doom are brutal in their simplicity, and withal asgenuine and sincere as greed, vanity, and lust can make them. The trueamateur takes pleasure even in the pious exhortations, because he knowsthat they crawl into their place, lest the hypocrite be scandalised. But with years the Newgate Calendar also declined, and at last it hasfollowed other dead literatures into the night. Meanwhile the broadside had enjoyed an unbroken and prosperous career. Up and down London, up and down England, hurried the Patterer or FlyingStationer. There was no murder, no theft, no conspiracy, which did nottempt the Gutter Muse to doggerel. But it was not until James Catnachcame up from Alnwick to London (in 1813), that the trade reached the topof its prosperity. The vast sheets, which he published with their scurvycouplets, and the admirable picture, serving in its time for a hundredexecutions, have not lost their power to fascinate. Theirs is the aspectof the early woodcut; the coarse type and the catchpenny headlines area perpetual delight; as you unfold them, your care keeps pace with youradmiration; and you cannot feel them crackle beneath your hand withoutenthusiasm and without regret. He was no pedant--Jemmy Catnach; andthe image of his ruffians was commonly as far from portraiture, ashis verses were remote from poetry. But he put together in a roughlyartistic shape the last murder, robbery, or scandal of the day. Hismasterpieces were far too popular to live, and if they knew so vast acirculation as 2, 500, 000 they are hard indeed to come by. And now theart is wellnigh dead; though you may discover an infrequent survival ina country town. But how should Catnach, were he alive to-day, competewith the Special Edition of an evening print? The decline of the Scoundrel, in fact, has been followed by thedisappearance of chap-book and broadside. The Education Act, which madethe cheap novel a necessity, destroyed at a blow the literature of thestreet. Since the highwayman wandered, fur-coated, into the City, thepatterer has lost his occupation. Robbery and murder have degeneratedinto Chinese puzzles, whose solution is a pleasant irritant to theidle brain. The misunderstanding of Poe has produced a vast polyglotliterature, for which one would not give in exchange a single chapter ofCaptain Smith. Vautrin and Bill Sykes are already discredited, and itis a false reflection of M. Dupin, which dazzles the eye of a moral andunimaginative world. Yet the wise man sighs for those fearless days, when the brilliant Macheath rode vizarded down Shooter's Hill, andpresently saw his exploits set forth, with the proper accompaniment of arenowned and ancient woodcut, upon a penny broadside. CAPTAIN HIND JAMES HIND, the Master Thief of England, the fearless Captain of theHighway, was born at Chipping Norton in 1618. His father, a simplesaddler, had so poor an appreciation of his son's magnanimity, that heapprenticed him to a butcher; but Hind's destiny was to embrue hishands in other than the blood of oxen, and he had not long endured therestraint of this common craft when forty shillings, the gift ofhis mother, purchased him an escape, and carried him triumphant andambitious to London. Even in his negligent schooldays he had fastened upon a fittingcareer. A born adventurer, he sought only enterprise and command: if acommission in the army failed him, then he would risk his neck upon theroad, levying his own tax and imposing his own conditions. To one of hisdauntless resolution an opportunity need never have lacked; yet he owedhis first preferment to a happy accident. Surprised one evening in adrunken brawl, he was hustled into the Poultry Counter, and there madeacquaintance over a fresh bottle with Robert Allen, one of the chiefrogues in the Park, and a ruffian, who had mastered every trick in thegame of plunder. A dexterous cly-faker, an intrepid blade, Allen hadalso the keenest eye for untested talent, and he detected Hind's shiningqualities after the first glass. No sooner had they paid the price ofrelease, than Hind was admitted of his comrade's gang; he took theoath of fealty, and by way of winning his spurs was bid to hold upa traveller on Shooter's Hill. Granted his choice of a mount, hestraightway took the finest in the stable, with that keen perception ofhorse-flesh which never deserted him, and he confronted his first victimin the liveliest of humours. There was no falter in his voice, no hintof inexperience in his manner, when he shouted the battle-cry: 'Standand deliver!' The horseman, fearful of his life, instantly surrendered apurse of ten sovereigns, as to the most practised assailant on the road. Whereupon Hind, with a flourish of ancient courtesy, gave him twentyshillings to bear his charges. 'This, ' said he, 'is for handsale sake ';and thus they parted in mutual compliment and content. Allen was overjoyed at his novice's prowess. 'Did you not see, ' he criedto his companions, 'how he robbed him with a grace?' And well did thetrooper deserve his captain's compliment, for his art was perfect fromthe first. In bravery as in gallantry he knew no rival, and he plunderedwith so elegant a style, that only a churlish victim could resent theextortion. He would as soon have turned his back upon an enemy asdemand a purse uncovered. For every man he had a quip, for every womana compliment; nor did he ever conceal the truth that the means were forhim as important as the end. Though he loved money, he still insistedthat it should be yielded in freedom and good temper; and while heemptied more coaches than any man in England, he was never at a loss foradmirers. Under Allen he served a brilliant apprenticeship. Enrolled as a servant, he speedily sat at the master's right hand, and his nimble brainsdevised many a pretty campaign. For a while success dogged thehorse-hoofs of the gang; with wealth came immunity, and not one of thewarriors had the misfortune to look out upon the world through a grate. They robbed with dignity, even with splendour. Now they would driveforth in a coach and four, carrying with them a whole armoury ofoffensive weapons; now they would take the road apparelled as noblemen, and attended at a discreet distance by their proper servants. Butrecklessness brought the inevitable disaster; and it was no less apersonage than Oliver Cromwell who overcame the hitherto invincibleAllen. A handful of the gang attacked Oliver on his way from Huntingdon, but the marauders were outmatched, and the most of them were forcedto surrender. Allen, taken red-handed, swung at Tyburn; Hind, with hisbetter mount and defter horsemanship, rode clear away. The loss of his friend was a lesson in caution, and henceforth Hindresolved to follow his craft in solitude. He had embellished hisnative talent with all the instruction that others could impart, and hereflected that he who rode alone neither ran risk of discovery norhad any need to share his booty. Thus he began his easy, untrammelledcareer, making time and space of no account by his rapid, fearlessjourneys. Now he was prancing the moors of Yorkshire, now he wasscouring the plain between Gloucester and Tewkesbury, but wherever herode, he had a purse in his pocket and a jest on his tongue. To recallhis prowess is to ride with him (in fancy) under the open sky along thefair, beaten road; to put up with him at the busy, white posthouse, todrink unnumbered pints of mulled sack with the round-bellied landlord, to exchange boastful stories over the hospitable fire, and to ride forthin the morning with the joyous uncertainty of travel upon you. Failurealone lay outside his experience, and he presently became at once theterror and the hero of England. Not only was his courage conspicuous; luck also was his constantcompanion; and a happy bewitchment protected him for three years againstthe possibility of harm. He had been lying at Hatfield, at the GeorgeInn, and set out in the early morning for London. As he neared thetown-gate, an old beldame begged an alms of him, and though Hind, not liking her ill-favoured visage, would have spurred forward, thebeldame's glittering eye held his horse motionless. 'Good woman, ' criedHind, flinging her a crown, 'I am in haste; pray let me pass. ' 'Sir, 'answered the witch, 'three days I have awaited your coming. Would youhave me lose my labour now?' And with Hind's assent the sphinx deliveredher message: 'Captain Hind, ' said she, 'your life is beset with constantdanger, and since from your birth I have wished you well, my poor skillhas devised a perfect safeguard. ' With this she gave him a small boxcontaining what might have been a sundial or compass. 'Watch this star, 'quoth she, 'and when you know not your road, follow its guidance. Thusyou shall be preserved from every peril for the space of three years. Thereafter, if you still have faith in my devotion, seek me again, and Iwill renew the virtue of the charm. ' Hind took the box joyfully; but when he turned to murmur a word ofgratitude, the witch struck his nag's flanks with a white wand, thehorse leapt vehemently forward, and Hind saw his benefactress no more. Henceforth, however, a warning voice spoke to him as plainly as did thedemon to Socrates; and had he but obeyed the beldame's admonition, hemight have escaped a violent death. For he passed the last day of thethird year at the siege of Youghal, where; deprived of happy guidance, he was seriously wounded, and whence he presently regained England tohis own undoing. So long as he kept to the road, his life was one long comedy. His witand address were inexhaustible, and fortune never found him at a loss. He would avert suspicion with the tune of a psalm, as when, habitedlike a pious shepherd, he broke a traveller's head with his crook, anddeprived him of his horse. An early adventure was to force a pot-valiantparson, who had drunk a cup too much at a wedding, into a rarelyfarcical situation. Hind, having robbed two gentlemen's servants of around sum, went ambling along the road until he encountered a parson. 'Sir, ' said he, 'I am closely pursued by robbers. You, I dare swear, will not stand by and see me plundered. ' Before the parson couldprotest, he thrust a pistol into his hand, and bade him fire it at thefirst comer, while he rode off to raise the county. Meanwhile the rifledtravellers came up with the parson, who, straightway, mistaking themfor thieves, fired without effect, and then, riding forward, flung thepistol in the face of the nearest. Thus the parson of the parish wasdragged before the magistrate, while Hind, before his dupe couldfurnish an explanation, had placed many a mile between himself and hisadversary. Though he could on occasion show a clean pair of heels, Hind was neverlacking in valiance; and, another day, meeting a traveller with ahundred pounds in his pocket, he challenged him to fight there and then, staked his own horse against the money, and declared that he shouldwin who drew first blood. 'If I am the conqueror, ' said the magnanimousCaptain, 'I will give you ten pounds for your journey. If you arefavoured of fortune, you shall give me your servant's horse. ' The termswere instantly accepted, and in two minutes Hind had run his adversarythrough the sword-arm. But finding that his victim was but a poor squiregoing to London to pay his composition, he not only returned hismoney, but sought him out a surgeon, and gave him the best dinner thecountryside could afford. Thus it was his pleasure to act as a providence, many a time robbingPeter to pay Paul, and stripping the niggard that he might indulgehis fervent love of generosity. Of all usurers and bailiffs he hada wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which he played upon theextortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding on an easy rein through thetown, Hind heard a tumult at a street corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was arrested by a thievish usurer fora paltry twenty pounds. Dismounting, this providence in jack-bootsdischarged the debt, cancelled the bond, and took the innkeeper's goodsfor his own security. And thereupon overtaking the usurer, 'My friend!'he exclaimed, 'I lent you late a sum of twenty pounds. Repay it at once, or I take your miserable life. ' The usurer was obliged to return themoney, with another twenty for interest, and when he would take the lawof the innkeeper, was shown the bond duly cancelled, and was floggedwellnigh to death for his pains. So Hind rode the world up and down, redressing grievances like anEastern monarch, and rejoicing in the abasement of the evildoer. Norwas the spirit of his adventure bounded by the ocean. More than oncehe crossed the seas; the Hague knew him, and Amsterdam, though thesesomnolent cities gave small occasion for the display of his talents. It was from Scilly that he crossed to the Isle of Man, where, beingrecommended to Lord Derby, he gained high favour, and received inexchange for his jests a comfortable stipend. Hitherto, said theChronicles, thieving was unknown in the island. A man might walk whitherhe would, a bag of gold in one hand, a switch in the other, and fear nodanger. But no sooner had Hind appeared at Douglas than honest citizenswere pilfered at every turn. In dismay they sought the protection ofthe Governor, who instantly suspected Hind, and gallantly disclosed hissuspicions to the Captain. 'My lord!' exclaimed Hind, a blush upon hischeek, 'I protest my innocence; but willingly will I suffer the heaviestpenalty of your law if I am recognised for the thief. ' The victims, confronted with their robber, knew him not, picturing to the Governora monster with long hair and unkempt beard. Hind, acquitted withapologies, fetched from his lodging the disguise of periwig and beard. 'They laugh who win!' he murmured, and thus forced forgiveness and achuckle even from his judges. As became a gentleman-adventurer, Captain Hind was staunch in hisloyalty to his murdered King. To strip the wealthy was always reputable, but to rob a Regicide was a masterpiece of well-doing. A fervent zeal to lighten Cromwell's pocket had brought the illustriousAllen to the gallows. But Hind was not one whit abashed, and he wouldnever forego the chance of an encounter with his country's enemies. Histreatment of Hugh Peters in Enfield Chace is among his triumphs. At thefirst encounter the Presbyterian plucked up courage enough to opposehis adversary with texts. To Hind's command of 'Stand and deliver!' dulyenforced with a loaded pistol, the ineffable Peters replied with ox-eyesanctimoniously upturned: 'Thou shalt not steal; let him thatstole, steal no more, ' adding thereto other variations of the eighthcommandment. Hind immediately countered with exhortations against theawful sin of murder, and rebuked the blasphemy of the Regicides, who, to defend their own infamy, would wrest Scripture from its meaning. 'Did you not, O monster of impiety, ' mimicked Hind in the preacher's ownvoice, 'pervert for your own advantage the words of the Psalmist, whosaid, "Bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters ofiron"? Moreover, was it not Solomon who wrote: "Men do not despise athief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry"? And is not mysoul hungry for gold and the Regicides' discomfiture?' Peters was stillfumbling after texts when the final argument: 'Deliver thy money, or Iwill send thee out of the world!' frightened him into submission, andthirty broad pieces were Hind's reward. Not long afterwards he confronted Bradshaw near Sherborne, and, havingtaken from him a purse fat with Jacobuses, he bade the Sergeant standuncovered while he delivered a discourse upon gold, thus shaped bytradition: 'Ay, marry, sir, this is the metal that wins my heart forever! O precious gold, I admire and adore thee as much as Bradshaw, Prynne, or any villain of the same stamp. This is that incomparablemedicament, which the republican physicians call the wonder-workingplaster. It is truly catholic in operation, and somewhat akin to theJesuit's powder, but more effectual. The virtues of it are strange andvarious; it makes justice deaf as well as blind, and takes out spots ofthe deepest treason more cleverly than castle-soap does common stains;it alters a man's constitution in two or three days, more than thevirtuoso's transfusion of blood can do in seven years. 'Tis a greatalexiopharmick, and helps poisonous principles of rebellion, and thosethat use them. It miraculously exalts and purifies the eyesight, andmakes traitors behold nothing but innocence in the blackest malefactors. 'Tis a mighty cordial for a declining cause; it stifles faction orschism, as certainly as the itch is destroyed by butter and brimstone. In a word, it makes wise men fools, and fools wise men, and both knaves. The very colour of this precious balm is bright and dazzling. If itbe properly applied to the fist, that is in a decent manner, and acompetent dose, it infallibly performs all the cures which the evilsof humanity crave. ' Thus having spoken, he killed the six horses ofBradshaw's coach, and went contemptuously on his way. But he was not a Cavalier merely in sympathy, nor was he content toprove his loyalty by robbing Roundheads. He, too, would strike a blowfor his King, and he showed, first with the royal army in Scotland, andafterwards at Worcester, what he dared in a righteous cause. Indeed, itwas his part in the unhappy battle that cost him his life, and there isa strange irony in the reflection that, on the self-same day whereon SirThomas Urquhart lost his precious manuscripts in Worcester's kennels, the neck of James Hind was made ripe for the halter. His capture was dueto treachery. Towards the end of 1651 he was lodged with one Denzys, abarber, over against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street. Maybe he hadchosen his hiding-place for its neighbourhood to Moll Cutpurse's ownsanctuary. But a pack of traitors discovered him, and haling him beforethe Speaker of the House of Commons, got him committed forthwith toNewgate. At first he was charged with theft and murder, and was actuallycondemned for killing George Sympson at Knole in Berkshire. But the dayafter his sentence, an Act of Oblivion was passed, and Hind was put upontrial for treason. During his examination he behaved with the utmostgaiety, boastfully enlarging upon his services to the King's cause. 'These are filthy jingling spurs, ' said he as he left the bar, pointingto the irons about his legs, 'but I hope to exchange them ere long. 'His good-humour remained with him to the end. He jested in prison as hejested on the road, and it was with a light heart that he mounted thescaffold built for him at Worcester. His was the fate reserved fortraitors: he was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and though his head wasprivily stolen and buried on the day of execution, his quarters weredisplayed upon the town walls, until time and the birds destoyed{sic}them utterly. Thus died the most famous highwayman that ever drew rein upon an Englishroad; and he died the death of a hero. The unnumbered crimes of violenceand robbery wherewith he might have been charged weighed not a feather'sweight upon his destiny; he suffered not in the cause of plunder, butin the cause of Charles Stuart. And in thus excusing his death, hiscontemporaries did him scant justice. For while in treasonable loyaltyhe had a thousand rivals, on the road he was the first exponent of thegrand manner. The middle of the seventeenth century was, in truth, thegolden age of the Road. Not only were all the highwaymen Cavaliers, but many a Cavalier turned highwayman. Broken at their King's defeat, a hundred captains took pistol and vizard, and revenged themselves asfreebooters upon the King's enemies. And though Hind was outlaw firstand royalist afterwards, he was still the most brilliant collector ofthem all. If he owed something to his master, Allen, he added from thestorehouse of his own genius a host of new precepts, and was the firstto establish an enduring tradition. Before all things he insisted upon courtesy; a guinea stolen by anawkward ruffian was a sorry theft; levied by a gentleman of the highway, it was a tribute paid to courage by generosity. Nothing would atone foran insult offered to a lady; and when it was Hind's duty to seize partof a gentlewoman's dowry on the Petersfield road, he not only pleadedhis necessity in eloquent excuse, but he made many promises on behalf ofknight-errantry and damsels in distress. Never would he extort a trinketto which association had given a sentimental worth; during a long careerhe never left any man, save a Roundhead, penniless upon the road; norwas it his custom to strip the master without giving the man a triflefor his pains. His courage, moreover, was equal to his understanding. Since he was afraid of nothing, it was not his habit to bluster when hewas not determined to have his way. When once his pistol was levelled, when once the solemn order was given, the victim must either fightor surrender; and Hind was never the man to decline a combat with anyweapons and in any circumstances. Like the true artist that he was, he neglected no detail of his craft. As he was a perfect shot, so also he was a finished horseman; and hisskill not only secured him against capture, but also helped him to thetheft of such horses as his necessities required, or to the exchangeof a worn-out jade for a mettled prancer. Once upon a time a credulousfarmer offered twenty pounds and his own gelding for the Captain'smount. Hind struck a bargain at once, and as they jogged along the roadhe persuaded the farmer to set his newly-purchased horse at the tallesthedge, the broadest ditch. The bumpkin failed, as Hind knew he wouldfail; and, begging the loan for an instant of his ancient steed, Hindnot only showed what horsemanship could accomplish, but straightwayrode off with the better horse and twenty pounds in his pocket. Somarvellously did his reputation grow, that it became a distinction to beoutwitted by him, and the brains of innocent men were racked to inventtricks which might have been put upon them by the illustrious Captain. Thus livelier jests and madder exploits were fathered upon him thanupon any of his kind, and he has remained for two centuries the primefavourite of the chap-books. Robbing alone, he could afford to despise pedantry: did he meet atraveller who amused his fancy he would give him the pass-word ('thefiddler's paid, ' or what not), as though the highway had not its codeof morals; nor did he scruple, when it served his purpose, to rob thebunglers of his own profession. By this means, indeed, he raised thestandard of the Road and warned the incompetent to embrace an easiertrade. While he never took a shilling without sweetening his depredationwith a joke, he was, like all humorists, an acute philosopher. 'Rememberwhat I tell you, ' he said to the foolish persons who once attempted torob him, the master-thief of England, 'disgrace not yourself for smallsums, but aim high, and for great ones; the least will bring you to thegallows. ' There, in five lines, is the whole philosophy of thieving, andmany a poor devil has leapt from the cart to his last dance because heneglected the counsel of the illustrious Hind. Among his aversions werelawyers and thief-catchers. 'Truly I could wish, ' he exclaimed in court, 'that full-fed fees were as little used in England among lawyers as theeating of swine's flesh was among the Jews. ' When you remember the termsof friendship whereon he lived with Moll Cutpurse, his hatred of thethief-catcher, who would hang his brother for 'the lucre of ten pounds, which is the reward, ' or who would swallow a false oath 'as easily asone would swallow buttered fish, ' is a trifle mysterious. Perhaps beforehis death an estrangement divided Hind and Moll. Was it that the RoaringGirl was too anxious to take the credit of Hind's success? Or did heharbour the unjust suspicion that when the last descent was made uponhim at the barber's, Moll might have given a friendly warning? Of this he made no confession, but the honest thief was ever a liberalhater of spies and attorneys, and Hind's prudence is unquestioned. A miracle of intelligence, a master of style, he excelled all hiscontemporaries and set up for posterity an unattainable standard. Theeighteenth century flattered him by its imitation; but cowardice andswagger compelled it to limp many a dishonourable league behind. Despitethe single inspiration of dancing a corant upon the green, Claude Duval, compared to Hind, was an empty braggart. Captain Stafford spoiled thebest of his effects with a more than brutal vice. Neither Mull-Sack northe Golden Farmer, for all their long life and handsome plunder, arecomparable for an instant to the robber of Peters and Bradshaw. Theykept their fist fiercely upon the gold of others, and cared not bywhat artifice it was extorted. Hind never took a sovereign meanly;he approached no enterprise which he did not adorn. Living in a trueAugustan age, he was a classic among highwaymen, the very Virgil of thePad. MOLL CUTPURSE AND JONATHAN WILD I--MOLL CUTPURSE THE most illustrious woman of an illustrious age, Moll Cutpurse hasnever lacked the recognition due to her genius. She was scarce of agewhen the town devoured in greedy admiration the first record of herpranks and exploits. A year later Middleton made her the heroine of asparkling comedy. Thereafter she became the favourite of the rufflers, the commonplace of the poets. Newgate knew her, and Fleet Street; hermanly figure was as familiar in the Bear Garden as at the Devil Tavern;courted alike by the thief and his victim, for fifty years she liveda life brilliant as sunlight, many-coloured as a rainbow. And she isremembered, after the lapse of centuries, not only as the Queen-Regentof Misrule, the benevolent tyrant of cly-filers and heavers, of hacksand blades, but as the incomparable Roaring Girl, free of the playhouse, who perchance presided with Ben Jonson over the Parliament of Wits. She was born in the Barbican at the heyday of England's greatness, fouryears after the glorious defeat of the Armada, and had to her father anhonest shoemaker. She came into the world (saith rumour) with her fistdoubled, and even in the cradle gave proof of a boyish, boisterousdisposition. Her girlhood, if the word be not an affront to her mannishcharacter, was as tempestuous as a wind-blown petticoat. A very 'tomrigand rump-scuttle, ' she knew only the sports of boys: her war-like spiritcounted no excuse too slight for a battle; and so valiant a lad was sheof her hands, so well skilled in cudgel-play, that none ever wresteda victory from fighting Moll. While other girls were content to hem akerchief or mark a sampler, Moll would escape to the Bear Garden, andthere enjoy the sport of baiting, whose loyal patron she remained untothe end. That which most bitterly affronted her was the magpie talk ofthe wenches. 'Why, ' she would ask in a fury of indignation, 'why crouchover the fire with a pack of gossips, when the highway invites you toromance? Why finger a distaff, when a quarterstaff comes more aptly toyour hand?' And thus she grew in age and stature, a stranger to the soft delightsof her sex, her heart still deaf to the trivial voice of love. Had not awayward accident cumbered her with a kirtle, she would have sought deathor glory in the wars; she would have gone with Colonel Downe's men uponthe road; she would have sailed to the Spanish Main for pieces ofeight. But the tyranny of womanhood was as yet supreme, and the honestshoemaker, ignorant of his daughter's talent, bade her take service at arespectable saddler's, and thus suppress the frowardness of her passion. Her rebellion was instant. Never would she abandon the sword andthe wrestling-booth for the harmless bodkin and the hearthstone ofdomesticity. Being absolute in refusal, she was kidnapped by her friendsand sent on board a ship, bound for Virginia and slavery. There, in thedearth of womankind, even so sturdy a wench as Moll might have founda husband; but the enterprise was little to her taste, and, alwaysresourceful, she escaped from shipboard before the captain had weighedhis anchor. Henceforth she resolved her life should be free and chainless as thewinds. Never more should needle and thread tempt her to a womanishinactivity. As Hercules, whose counterpart she was, changed his club forthe distaff of Omphale, so would she put off the wimple and bodice ofher sex for jerkin and galligaskins. If she could not allure manhood, then would she brave it. And though she might not cross swords with hercountry's foes, at least she might levy tribute upon the unjustly rich, and confront an enemy wherever there was a full pocket. Her entrance into a gang of thieves was beset by no difficulty. The BearGarden, always her favourite resort, had made her acquainted with allthe divers and rumpads of the town. The time, moreover, was favourableto enterprise, and once again was genius born into a golden age. Thecutting of purses was an art brought to perfection, and already the moreelegant practice of picking pockets was understood. The transition gavescope for endless ingenuity, and Moll was not slow in mastering thetheory of either craft. It was a changing fashion of dress, as I havesaid, which forced a new tactic upon the thief; the pocket was inventedbecause the hanging purse was too easy a prey for the thievish scissors. And no sooner did the world conceal its wealth in pockets than thecly-filer was born to extract the booty with his long, nimble fingers. The trick was managed with an admirable forethought, which has been aconstant example to after ages. The file was always accompanied by abull, whose duty it was to jostle and distract the victim while hispockets were rifled. The bung, or what not, was rapidly passed on to theattendant rub, who scurried off before the cry of STOP THIEF! could beraised. Thus was the craft of thieving practised when Moll was enrolled a humblemember of the gang. Yet nature had not endowed her with the qualitieswhich ensure an active triumph. 'The best signs and marks of a happy, industrious hand, ' wrote the hoyden, 'is a long middle finger, equallysuited with that they call the fool's or first finger. ' Now, though shewas never a clumsy jade, the practice of sword-play and quarterstaff hadnot refined the industry of her hands, which were the rather framedfor strength than for delicacy. So that though she served a willingapprenticeship, and eagerly shared the risks of her chosen trade, thefear of Newgate and Tyburn weighed heavily upon her spirit, and she castabout her for a method of escape. Avoiding the danger of discovery, shewas loth to forego her just profit, and hoped that intelligence mightatone for her sturdy, inactive fingers. Already she had endeared herselfto the gang by unnumbered acts of kindness and generosity; already herinflexible justice had made her umpire in many a difficult dispute. If arascal could be bought off at the gallows' foot, there was Moll withan open purse; and so speedily did she penetrate all the secrets ofthievish policy, that her counsel and comfort were soon indispensable. Here, then, was her opportunity. Always a diplomatist rather thana general, she gave up the battlefield for the council chamber. Sheplanned the robberies which defter hands achieved; and, turning herselffrom cly-filer to fence, she received and changed to money all thewatches and trinkets stolen by the gang. Were a citizen robbed upon the highway, he straightway betook himself toMoll, and his property was presently returned him at a handsome price. Her house, in short, became a brokery. Hither the blades and diversbrought their purchases, and sought the ransom; hither came the outragedvictims to buy again the jewels and rings which thievish fingershad pinched. With prosperity her method improved, until at last herstatesmanship controlled the remotest details of the craft. Did one ofher gang get to work overnight and carry off a wealthy swag, she had dueintelligence of the affair betimes next morning, so that, furnishedwith an inventory of the booty, she might make a just division, or beprepared for the advent of the rightful owner. So she gained a complete ascendency over her fellows. And when once herposition was assured, she came forth a pitiless autocrat. Henceforth thegang existed for her pleasure, not she for the gang's; and she was asurgent to punish insubordination as is an empress to avenge the heinoussin of treason. The pickpocket who had claimed her protection knew nomore the delight of freedom. If he dared conceal the booty that washis, he had an enemy more powerful than the law, and many a time didcontumacy pay the last penalty at the gallows. But the faithful also hadtheir reward, for Moll never deserted a comrade, and while she livedin perfect safety herself she knew well how to contrive the safety ofothers. Nor was she content merely to discharge those duties of thefence for which an instinct of statecraft designed her. Her restlessbrain seethed with plans of plunder, and if her hands were idle it washer direction that emptied half the pockets in London. Having drilledher army of divers to an unparalleled activity, she cast about for somefresh method of warfare, and so enrolled a regiment of heavers, whowould lurk at the mercers' doors for an opportunity to carry off ledgersand account-books. The price of redemption was fixed by Moll herself, and until the mercers were aroused by frequent losses to a quickervigilance, the trade was profitably secure. Meanwhile new clients were ever seeking her aid, and, already empressof the thieves, she presently aspired to the friendship and patronageof the highwaymen. Though she did not dispose of their booty, she wasappointed their banker, and vast was the treasure entrusted to thecoffers of honest Moll. Now, it was her pride to keep only the bestcompany, for she hated stupidity worse than a clumsy hand, and they weremen of wit and spirit who frequented her house. Thither came the famousCaptain Hind, the Regicides' inveterate enemy, whose lofty achievementsMoll, with an amiable extravagance, was wont to claim for her own. Thither came the unamiably notorious Mull Sack, who once emptiedCromwell's pocket on the Mall, and whose courage was as formidable ashis rough-edged tongue. Another favourite was the ingenious Crowder, whose humour it was to take the road habited like a bishop, and whosurprised the victims of his greed with ghostly counsel. Thus it was amerry party that assembled in the lady's parlour, loyal to the memory ofthe martyred king, and quick to fling back an offending pleasantry. But the house in Fleet Street was a refuge as well as a resort, thesanctuary of a hundred rascals, whose misdeeds were not too flagrantlydiscovered. For, while Moll always allowed discretion to govern herconduct, while she would risk no present security for a vague promiseof advantages to come, her secret influence in Newgate made her morepowerful than the hangman and the whole bench of judges. There wasno turnkey who was not her devoted servitor, but it was the clerk ofNewgate to whom she and her family were most deeply beholden. This wasone Ralph Briscoe, as pretty a fellow as ever deserted the law for abull-baiting. Though wizened and clerkly in appearance, he was of alofty courage; and Moll was heard to declare that had she not been swornto celibacy, she would have cast an eye upon the faithful Ralph, who wasobedient to her behests whether at Gaol Delivery or Bear Garden. For herhe would pack a jury or get a reprieve; for him she would bait a bullwith the fiercest dogs in London. Why then should she fear the law, whenthe clerk of Newgate and Gregory the Hangman fought upon her side? For others the arbiter of life and death, she was only thrice in anunexampled career confronted with the law. Her first occasion of arrestwas so paltry that it brought discredit only on the constable. Thisjack-in-office, a very Dogberry, encountered Moll returning down LudgateHill from some merry-making, a lanthorn carried pompously before her. Startled by her attire he questioned her closely, and receiving insultfor answer, promptly carried her to the Round House. The customarygarnish made her free or the prison, and next morning a brief interviewwith the Lord Mayor restored Moll to liberty but not to forgetfulness. She had yet to wreak her vengeance upon the constable for a monstrousaffront, and hearing presently that he had a rich uncle in Shropshire, she killed the old gentleman (in imagination) and made the constable hisheir. Instantly a retainer, in the true garb and accent of the country, carried the news to Dogberry, and sent him off to Ludlow on thecostliest of fool's errands. He purchased a horse and set forthjoyously, as became a man of property; he limped home, broken in purseand spirit, the hapless object of ridicule and contempt. Perhaps heguessed the author of this sprightly outrage; but Moll, for her part, was far too finished a humorist to reveal the truth, and hereafter shewas content to swell the jesting chorus. Her second encounter with justice was no mere pleasantry, and it wasonly her marvellous generalship that snatched her career from untimelyruin and herself from the clutch of Master Gregory. Two of heremissaries had encountered a farmer in Chancery Lane. They spoke withhim first at Smithfield, and knew that his pocket was well lined withbank-notes. An improvised quarrel at a tavern-door threw the farmer offhis guard, and though he defended the money, his watch was snatched fromhis fob and duly carried to Moll. The next day the victim, anxious torepurchase his watch, repaired to Fleet Street, where Moll generouslypromised to recover the stolen property. Unhappily security hadencouraged recklessness, and as the farmer turned to leave he espiedhis own watch hanging among other trinkets upon the wall. With a rarediscretion he held his peace until he had called a constable to his aid, and this time the Roaring Girl was lodged in Newgate, with an ugly crimelaid to her charge. Committed for trial, she demanded that the watch should be left in theconstable's keeping, and, pleading not guilty when the sessions cameround, insisted that her watch and the farmer's were not the same. Thefarmer, anxious to acknowledge his property, demanded the constable todeliver the watch, that it might be sworn to in open court; and when theconstable put his hand to his pocket the only piece of damning evidencehad vanished, stolen by the nimble fingers of one of Moll's officers. Thus with admirable trickery and a perfect sense of dramatic effectshe contrived her escape, and never again ran the risk of a suddendiscovery. For experience brought caution in its train, and though thiswiliest of fences lived almost within the shadow of Newgate, though shewas as familiar in the prison yard as at the Globe Tavern, her nightlyresort, she obeyed the rules of life and law with so precise anexactitude that suspicion could never fasten upon her. Her kingdom wasmidway between robbery and justice. And as she controlled the mysteryof thieving so, in reality, she meted out punishment to the evildoer. Honest citizens were robbed with small risk to life or property. ForMoll always frowned upon violence, and was ever ready to restore thebooty for a fair ransom. And the thieves, driven by discipline to acertain humanity, plied their trade with an obedience and orderlinesshitherto unknown. Moll's then was no mean achievement. Her career wasnot circumscribed by her trade, and the Roaring Girl, the daredevilcompanion of the wits and bloods, enjoyed a fame no less glorious thanthe Queen of Thieves. 'Enter Moll in a frieze jerkin and a black safeguard. ' Thus in the oldcomedy she comes upon the stage; and truly it was by her clothes thatshe was first notorious. By accident a woman, by habit a man, she mustneeds invent a costume proper to her pursuits. But she was no shriekingreformer, no fanatic spying regeneration in a pair of breeches. Only inher attire she showed her wit; and she went to a bull-baiting in such adress as well became her favourite sport. She was not of those who 'walkin spurs but never ride. ' The jerkin, the doublet, the galligaskinswere put on to serve the practical purposes of life, not to attract thepoliceman or the spinster. And when a petticoat spread its ample foldsbeneath the doublet, not only was her array handsome, but it symbolisedthe career of one who was neither man nor woman, and yet both. After awhile, however, the petticoat seemed too tame for her stalwart temper, and she exchanged it for the great Dutch slop, habited in which unseemlygarment she is pictured in the ancient prints. Up and down the town she romped and scolded, earning the name whichMiddleton gave her in her green girlhood. 'She has the spirit of fourgreat parishes, ' says the wit in the comedy, 'and a voice that willdrown all the city. ' If a gallant stood in the way, she drew upon him inan instant, and he must be a clever swordsman to hold his ground againstthe tomboy who had laid low the German fencer himself. A good fellowalways, she had ever a merry word for the passer-by, and so sharp washer tongue that none ever put a trick upon her. Not to know Moll was tobe inglorious, and she 'slipped from one company to another like a fateel between a Dutchman's fingers. ' Now at Parker's Ordinary, now at theBear Garden, she frequented only the haunts of men, and not until oldage came upon her did she endure patiently the presence of women. Her voice and speech were suited to the galligaskin. She was atrue disciple of Maltre François, hating nothing so much as mincingobscenity, and if she flavoured her discourse with many a blasphemousquip, the blasphemy was 'not so malicious as customary. ' Like the bloodshe was, she loved good ale and wine; and she regarded it among herproudest titles to renown that she was the first of women to smoketobacco. Many was the pound of best Virginian that she bought ofMistress Gallipot, and the pipe, with monkey, dog, and eagle, is herconstant emblem. Her antic attire, the fearless courage of her pranks, now and again involved her in disgrace or even jeopardised her freedom;but her unchanging gaiety made light of disaster, and still she laughedand rollicked in defiance of prude and pedant. Her companion in many a fantastical adventure was Banks, the vintner ofCheapside, that same Banks who taught his horse to dance and shodhim with silver. Now once upon a time a right witty sport was devisedbetween them. The vintner bet Moll £20 that she would not ride fromCharing Cross to Shoreditch astraddle on horseback, in breeches anddoublet, boots and spurs. The hoyden took him up in a moment, and added of her own devilry atrumpet and banner. She set out from Charing Cross bravely enough, anda trumpeter being an unwonted spectacle, the eyes of all the town wereclapped upon her. Yet none knew her until she reached Bishopsgate, wherean orange-wench set up the cry, 'Moll Cutpurse on horseback!' Instantlythe cavalier was surrounded by a noisy mob. Some would have torn herfrom the saddle for an imagined insult upon womanhood, others, morewisely minded, laughed at the prank with good-humoured merriment. Everyminute the throng grew denser, and it had fared hardly with roysteringMoll, had not a wedding and the arrest of a debtor presently distractedthe gaping idlers. As the mob turned to gaze at the fresh wonder, shespurred her horse until she gained Newington by an unfrequented lane. There she waited until night should cover her progress to Shoreditch, and thus peacefully she returned home to lighten the vintner's pocket oftwenty pounds. The fame of the adventure spread abroad, and that the scandal shouldnot be repeated Moll was summoned before the Court of Arches to answer acharge of appearing publicly in mannish apparel. The august tribunalhad no terror for her, and she received her sentence to do penance in awhite sheet at Paul's Cross during morning-service on a Sunday with anaudacious contempt. 'They might as well have shamed a black dog as me, 'she proudly exclaimed; and why should she dread the white sheet, when all the spectators looked with a lenient eye upon her professeddiscomfiture?' For a halfpenny, ' she said, 'she would have travelledto every market-town of England in the guise of a penitent, ' and havingtippled off three quarts of sack she swaggered to Paul's Cross in themaddest of humours. But not all the courts on earth could lengthen herpetticoat, or contract the Dutch slop by a single fold. For a while, perhaps, she chastened her costume, yet she soon reverted to the ancientmode, and to her dying day went habited as a man. As bear baiting was the passion of her life, so she was scrupulous inthe care and training of her dogs. She gave them each a trundle-bed, wrapping them from the cold in sheets and blankets, while their foodwould not have dishonoured a gentleman's table. Parrots, too, gave asense of colour and companionship to her house; and it was in this loveof pets, and her devotion to cleanliness, that she showed a trace ofdormant womanhood. Abroad a ribald and a scold, at home she was theneatest of housewives, and her parlour, with its mirrors and itsmanifold ornaments, was the envy of the neighbours. So her tradeflourished, and she lived a life of comfort, of plenty even, until theCivil War threw her out of work. When an unnatural conflict set thewhole country at loggerheads, what occasion was there for the honestprig? And it is not surprising that, like all the gentlemen adventurersof the age, Moll remained most stubbornly loyal to the King's cause. She made the conduit in Fleet Street run with wine when Charles came toLondon in 1638; and it was her amiable pleasantry to give the name ofStrafford to a clever, cunning bull, and to dub the dogs that assailedhim Pym, Hampden, and the rest, that right heartily she might applaudthe courage of Strafford as he threw off his unwary assailants. So long as the quarrel lasted, she was compelled to follow a professionmore ancient than the fence's; for there is one passion which war itselfcannot extinguish. When once the King had laid his head 'down as upon abed, ' when once the Protector had proclaimed his supremacy, the industryof the road revived; and there was not a single diver or rumpad thatdid not declare eternal war upon the black-hearted Regicides. Witha laudable devotion to her chosen cause, Moll despatched the mostexperienced of her gang to rob Lady Fairfax on her way to church; andthere is a tradition that the Roaring Girl, hearing that Fairfax himselfwould pass by Hounslow, rode forth to meet him, and with her own voicebade him stand and deliver. One would like to believe it; yet it isscarce credible. If Fairfax had spent the balance of an ignominiouscareer in being plundered by a band of loyal brigands, he would nothave had time to justify the innumerable legends of pockets emptiedand pistols levelled at his head. Moreover, Moll herself was ladenwith years, and she had always preferred the council chamber to thebattlefield. But it is certain that, with Captain Hind and Mull Sack toaid, she schemed many a clever plot against the Roundheads, and noblyshe played her part in avenging the martyred King. Thus she declined into old age, attended, like Queen Mary, by her maids, who would card, reel, spin, and beguile her leisure with sweet singing. Though her spirit was untamed, the burden of her years compelled her toa tranquil life. She, who formerly never missed a bull-baiting, must nowcontent herself with tick-tack. Her fortune, moreover, had been wreckedin the Civil War. Though silver shells still jingled in her pocket, timewas she knew the rattle of the yellow boys. But she never lost courage, and died at last of a dropsy, in placid contentment with her lot. Assuredly she was born at a time well suited to her genius. Had shelived to-day, she might have been a 'Pioneer'; she might even havediscussed some paltry problem of sex in a printed obscenity. In her own freer, wiser age, she was not man's detractor, but his rival;and if she never knew the passion of love, she was always loyal tothe obligation of friendship. By her will she left twenty pounds tocelebrate the Second Charles's restoration to his kingdom; and youcontemplate her career with the single regret that she died a brief yearbefore the red wine, thus generously bestowed, bubbled at the fountain. II--JONATHAN WILD WHEN Jonathan Wild and the Count La Ruse, in Fielding's narrative, tooka hand at cards, Jonathan picked his opponent's pocket, though he knewit was empty, while the Count, from sheer force of habit, stacked thecards, though Wild had not a farthing to lose. And if in his unculturedyouth the great man stooped to prig with his own hand, he was earlycured of the weakness: so that Fielding's picture of the hero taking abottle-screw from the Ordinary's pocket in the very moment of death isentirely fanciful. For 'this Machiavel of Thieves, ' as a contemporarystyled him, left others to accomplish what his ingenuity had planned. His was the high policy of theft. If he lived on terms of familiarintimacy with the mill-kens, the bridle-culls, the buttock-and-filesof London, he was none the less the friend and minister of justice. Heenjoyed the freedom of Newgate and the Old Bailey. He came and went ashe liked: he packed juries, he procured bail, he manufactured evidence;and there was scarce an assize or a sessions passed but he slew his man. The world knew him for a robber, yet could not refuse his brilliantservice. At the Poultry Counter, you are told, he laid the foundationsof his future greatness, and to the Poultry Counter he was committed forsome trifling debt ere he had fully served his apprenticeship to theart and mystery of buckle-making. There he learned his craft, and at hisenlargement he was able forthwith to commence thief-catcher. His planwas conceived with an effrontery that was nothing less than genius. On the one side he was the factor, or rather the tyrant, of thecross-coves: on the other he was the trusted agent of justice, thebenefactor of the outraged and the plundered. Among his earliestexploits was the recovery of the Countess of G--d--n's chair, impudentlycarried off when her ladyship had but just alighted; and the couragewherewith he brought to justice the murderers of one Mrs. Knap, who hadbeen slain for some trifling booty, established his reputation as upona rock. He at once advertised himself in the public prints asThief-Catcher General of Great Britain and Ireland, and proceeded tosend to the gallows every scoundrel that dared dispute his position. His opportunities of gain were infinite. Even if he did not organisethe robbery which his cunning was presently to discover, he had spies inevery hole and corner to set him on the felon's track. Nor did he leavea single enterprise to chance: 'He divided the city and suburbs intowards or divisions, and appointed the persons who were to attend eachward, and kept them strictly to their duty. ' If a subordinate daredto disobey or to shrink from murder, Jonathan hanged him at the nextassize, and happily for him he had not a single confederate whose neckhe might not put in the halter when he chose. Thus he preserved theunion and the fidelity of his gang, punishing by judicial murder thesmallest insubordination, the faintest suspicion of rivalry. Even whenhe had shut his victim up in Newgate, he did not leave him so long asthere was a chance of blackmail. He would make the most generous offersof evidence and defence to every thief that had a stiver left him. But whether or not he kept his bargain--that depended upon policy andinclination. On one occasion, when he had brought a friend to the OldBailey, and relented at the last moment, he kept the prosecutor drunkfrom the noble motive of self-interest, until the case was over. And soesteemed was he of the officers of the law that even this interferencedid but procure a reprimand. His meanest action marked him out from his fellows, but it was not untilhe habitually pillaged the treasures he afterwards restored to theirgrateful owners for a handsome consideration, that his art reached thehighest point of excellence. The event was managed by him with amazingadroitness from beginning to end. It was he who discovered the wealth and habit of the victim; it was hewho posted the thief and seized the plunder, giving a paltry commissionto his hirelings for the trouble; it was he who kept whatever valuableswere lost in the transaction; and as he was the servant of the Court, discovery or inconvenience was impossible. Surely the Machiavel ofThieves is justified of his title. He was known to all the rich andtitled folk in town; and if he was generally able to give them backtheir stolen valuables at something more than double their value, hetreated his clients with a most proper insolence. When Lady M--n wasunlucky enough to lose a silver buckle at Windsor, she asked Wild torecover it, and offered the hero twenty pounds for his trouble. 'Zounds, Madam, ' says he, 'you offer nothing. It cost the gentleman who took itforty pounds for his coach, equipage, and other expenses to Windsor. 'His impudence increased with success, and in the geniality of his cupshe was wont to boast his amazing rogueries: 'hinting not without vanityat the poor Understandings of the Greatest Part of Mankind, and his ownSuperior Cunning. ' In fifteen years he claimed £10, 000 for his dividend of recoveredplunderings, and who shall estimate the moneys which flowed to histreasury from blackmail and the robberies of his gang? So brisk becamehis trade in jewels and the precious metals that he opened relationswith Holland, and was master of a fleet. His splendour increased withwealth: he carried a silver-mounted sword, and a footman tramped athis heels. 'His table was very splendid, ' says a biographer: 'heseldom dining under five Dishes, the Reversions whereof were generallycharitably bestow'd on the Commonside felons. ' At his second marriagewith Mrs. Mary D--n, the hempen widow of Scull D--n, his humour was mosthappily expressed: he distributed white ribbons among the turnkeys, hegave the Ordinary gloves and favours, he sent the prisoners of Newgateseveral ankers of brandy for punch. 'Twas a fitting complaisance, sincehis fortune was drawn from Newgate, and since he was destined himself, afew years later, to drink punch--'a liquor nowhere spoken against inthe Scriptures'--with the same Ordinary whom he thus magnificentlydecorated. Endowed with considerable courage, for a while he had theprudence to save his skin, and despite his bravado he was known onoccasion to yield a plundered treasure to an accomplice who set a pistolto his head. But it is certain that the accomplice died at Tyburn forhis pains, and on equal terms Jonathan was resolute with the best. Onthe trail he was savage as a wild beast. When he arrested James Wrightfor a robbery committed upon the persons of the Earl of B--l--n and theLord Bruce, he held on to the victim's chin by his teeth--an exploitwhich reminds you of the illustrious Tiger Roche. Even in his lifetime he was generously styled the Great. The scourge ofLondon, he betrayed and destroyed every man that ever dared to liveupon terms of friendship with him. It was Jonathan that made Blueskin athief, and Jonathan screened his creature from justice only so long asclemency seemed profitable. At the first hint of disobedience Blueskinwas committed to Newgate. When he had stood his trial, and was beingtaken to the Condemned Hole, he beckoned to Wild as though to aconference, and cut his throat with a penknife. The assembled rogues andturnkeys thought their Jonathan dead at last, and rejoiced exceedinglytherein. Straightway the poet of Newgate's Garland leaped into verse: Then hopeless of life, He drew his penknife, And made a sad widow of Jonathan's wife. But forty pounds paid her, her grief shall appease, And every man round me may rob, if he please. But Jonathan recovered, and Molly, his wife, was destined a second timeto win the conspicuous honour that belongs to a hempen widow. As his career drew to its appointed close, Fortune withheld her smiles. 'People got so peery, ' complained the great man, 'that ingeniousmen were put to dreadful shifts. ' And then, highest tribute to hisgreatness, an Act of Parliament was passed which made it a capitaloffence 'for a prig to steal with the hands of other people'; and in theincrease of public vigilance his undoing became certain. On the 2nd ofJanuary, 1725, a day not easy to forget, a creature of Wild's spokewith fifty yards of lace, worth £40, at his Captain's bidding, and Wild, having otherwise disposed of the plunder, was charged on the 10th ofMarch that he 'did feloniously receive of Katharine Stetham ten guineason account and under colour of helping the said Katharine Stetham tothe said lace again, and did not then, nor any time since, discoveror apprehend, or cause to be apprehended and brought to Justice, thepersons that committed the said felony. ' Thus runs the indictment, and, to the inexpressible relief of lesser men, Jonathan Wild was condemnedto the gallows. Thereupon he had serious thoughts of 'putting his house in order'; withan ironical smile he demanded an explanation of the text: 'Cursed isevery one that hangeth on a tree'; but, presently reflecting that 'hisTime was but short in this World, he improved it to the best advantagein Eating, Drinking, Swearing, Cursing, and talking to his Visitants. 'For all his bragging, drink alone preserved his courage: 'he was veryrestless in the Condemned Hole, ' though 'he gave little or no attentionto the condemned Sermon which the purblind Ordinary preached beforehim, ' and which was, in Fielding's immortal phrase, 'unto the Greeksfoolishness. ' But in the moment of death his distinction returned tohim. He tried, and failed, to kill himself; and his progress to thenubbing cheat was a triumph of execration. He reached Tyburn through ahowling mob, and died to a yell of universal joy. The Ordinary has left a record so precious and so lying, that it mustneeds be quoted at length. The great Thief-Catcher's confession isa masterpiece of comfort, and is so far removed from the truth ascompletely to justify Fielding's incomparable creation. 'Finding therewas no room for mercy (and how could I expect mercy, who never showedany)'--thus does the devil dodger dishonour our Jonathan's memory!--'assoon as I came into the Condemned Hole, I began to think of making apreparation for my soul. . . . To part with my wife, my dear Molly, isso great an Affliction to me, that it touches me to the Quick, and islike Daggers entering into my Heart. ' How tame the Ordinary's falsehoodto the brilliant invention of Fielding, who makes Jonathan kick hisTishy in the very shadow of the Tree! And the Reverend Gentleman gainsin unction as he goes: 'In the Cart they all kneeled down to prayers andseemed very penitent; the Ordinary used all the means imaginable to makethem think of another World, and after singing a penitential Psalm, theycry'd Lord Jesus Christ receive our Souls, the cart drew away and theywere all turned off. This is as good an account as can be given by me. 'Poor Ordinary! If he was modest, he was also untruthful, and you arecertain that it was not thus the hero met his death. Even had Fielding never written his masterpiece, Jonathan Wild wouldstill have been surnamed 'The Great. ' For scarce a chap-book appeared inthe year of Jonathan's death that did not expose the only right andtrue view of his character. 'His business, ' says one hack of prisonliterature, 'at all times was to put a false gloss upon things, andto make fools of mankind. ' Another precisely formulates the theoryof greatness insisted upon by Fielding with so lavish an irony and somasterly a wit. While it is certain that The History of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild is as noble a piece of irony as literature can show, whilefor the qualities of wit and candour it is equal to its motive, it islikewise true that therein you meet the indubitable Jonathan Wild. Itis an entertainment to compare the chap-books of the time with thereasoned, finished work of art: not in any spirit of pedantry--sinceaccuracy in these matters is of small account, but with intent to showhow doubly fortunate Fielding was in his genius and in his material. Ofcourse the writer rejoiced in the aid of imagination and eloquence;of course he embellished his picture with such inspirations as MissLaetitia and the Count; of course he preserves from the first page tothe last the highest level of unrivalled irony. But the sketch wasthere before him, and a lawyer's clerk had treated Jonathan in a vein ofheroism within a few weeks of his death. And since a plain statementis never so true as fiction, Fielding's romance is still more credible, still convinces with an easier effort, than the serious and pedestrianrecords of contemporaries. Nor can you return to its pages withoutrealising that, so far from being 'the evolution of a purelyintellectual conception, ' Jonathan Wild is a magnificently idealised andironical portrait of a great man. III--A PARALLEL (MOLL CUTPURSE AND JONATHAN WILD) THEY plied the same trade, each with incomparable success. By her, asby him, the art of the fence was carried to its ultimate perfection. Intheir hands the high policy of theft wanted nor dignity nor assurance. Neither harboured a single scheme which was not straightway translatedinto action, and they were masters at once of Newgate and the Highway. As none might rob without the encouragement of his emperor, so nonewas hanged at Tyburn while intrigue or bribery might avail to drag ahalf-doomed neck from the halter; and not even Moll herself wasmore bitterly tyrannical in the control of a reckless gang than thethin-jawed, hatchet-faced Jonathan Wild. They were statesmen rather than warriors--happy if they might directthe enterprises of others, and determined to punish the lightestdisobedience by death. The mind of each was readier than his right arm, and neither would risk an easy advantage by a misunderstood or unwontedsleight of hand. But when you leave the exercise of their craft tocontemplate their character with a larger eye, it is the woman who atevery point has the advantage. Not only was she the peerless inventorof a new cunning; she was at home (and abroad) the better fellow. Thesuppression of sex was in itself an unparalleled triumph, and themost envious detractor could not but marvel at the domination of herwomanhood. Moreover, she shone in a gayer, more splendid epoch. The worthy contemporary of Shakespeare, she had small difficulty inperforming feats of prowess and resource which daunted the intrepidruffians of the eighteenth century. Her period, in brief, gave her aneternal superiority; and it were as hopeless for Otway to surpassthe master whom he disgraced, as for Wild to o'ershadow the brilliantexample of Moll Cutpurse. Tyrants both, they exercised their sovereignty in accordance with theirvarying temperament. Hers was a fine, fat, Falstaffian humour, which, while it inspired Middleton, might have suggested to Shakespeare anequal companion of the drunken knight. His was but a narrow, cynic wit, not edged like the knife, which wellnigh cut his throat, but blunt andscratching like a worn-toothed saw. She laughed with a laugh that echoed from Ludgate to Charing Cross, andher voice drowned all the City. He grinned rarely and with malice;he piped in a voice shrill and acid as the tricks of his mischievousimagination. She knew no cruelty beyond the necessities of her life, and none regretted more than she the inevitable death of a traitor. He lusted after destruction with a fiendish temper, which was a grimanticipation of De Sade; he would even smile as he saw the noose tightenround the necks of the poor innocents he had beguiled to Tyburn. It washis boast that he had contrived robberies for the mere glory of dragginghis silly victims to the gallows. But Moll, though she stood half-waybetween the robber and his prey, would have sacrificed a hundredwell-earned commissions rather than see her friends and comradesstrangled. Her temperament compelled her to the loyal support of her ownorder, and she would have shrunk in horror from her rival, who, for allhis assumed friendship with the thief, was a staunch and subtle ally ofjustice. Before all things she had the genius of success. Her public offenceswere trivial and condoned. She died in her bed, full of years and ofhonours, beloved by the light-fingered gentry, reverenced by all thejudges on the bench. He, for all the sacrifices he made to a squint-eyedlaw, died execrated alike by populace and police. Already Blueskin haddone his worst with a pen-knife; already Jack Sheppard and his comradeshad warned Drury Lane against the infamous thief-catcher. And soanxious, on the other hand, was the law to be quit of their too zealousservant, that an Act of Parliament was passed with the sole object ofplacing Jonathan's head within the noose. His method, meagre thoughmasterly, lulled him too soon to an impotent security. She, with herlarger view of life, her plumper sense of style, was content withnothing less than an ultimate sovereignty, and manifestly did she proveher superiority. Though born for the wimple, she was more of a man than the breechedand stockinged Jonathan, whose only deed of valiance was to hang, terrier-like, by his teeth to an evasive enemy. While he cheatedat cards and cogged the dice, she trained dogs and never missed abear-baiting. He shrank, like the coward that he was, from the exerciseof manly sports; she cared not what were the weapons--quarterstaff orbroadsword--so long as she vanquished her opponent. She scoured the townin search of insult; he did but exert his cunning when a quarrel was putupon him. Who, then, shall deny her manhood? Who shall whisper that hisstyle was the braver or the better suited to his sex? As became a hero, she kept the best of loose company: her parlour wasever packed with the friends of loyalty and adventure. Are not Hind andMull Sack worth a thousand Blueskins? Moreover, plunder and wealth werenot the only objects of her pursuit: she was not merely a fence but apatriot, and she would have accounted a thousand pounds well lost, ifshe did but compass the discomfiture of a Parliament-man. Indeed, ifJonathan, the thief-catcher, limped painfully after his magnificentexample, Jonathan the man and the sportsman confessed a pitifulinferiority to the valiant Moll. Thus she avenged her sex by distancingthe most illustrious of her rivals; and if he pleads for his credit ataste for theology, hers is the chuckle of contemptuous superiority. Shedied a patriot, bequeathing a fountain of wine to the champions ofan exiled king; he died a casuist, setting crabbed problems to theOrdinary. Here, again, the advantage is evident: loyalty is the virtueof men; a sudden attachment to religion is the last resource of thesecond-rate citizen and of the trapped criminal. RALPH BRISCOE A SPARE, lean frame; a small head set forward upon a pair of slopingshoulders; a thin, sharp nose, and rat-like eyes; a flat, hollow chest;shrunk shanks, modestly retreating from their snuff-coloured hose--theseare the tokens which served to remind his friends of Ralph Briscoe, theClerk of Newgate. As he left the prison in the grey air of morningupon some errand of mercy or revenge, he appeared the least fearsome ofmortals, while an awkward limp upon his left toe deepened the impressionof timidity. So abstract was his manner, so hesitant his gait, that hewould hug the wall as he went, nervously stroking its grimy surface withhis long, twittering fingers. But Ralph, as justice and the Jug knewtoo well, was neither fool nor coward. His character belied his outwardseeming. A large soul had crept into the case of his wizened body, andif a poltroon among his ancestors had gifted him with an alien type, hehad inherited from some nameless warrior both courage and resource. He was born in easy circumstances, and gently nurtured in the distantvillage of Kensington. Though cast in a scholar's mould, and very aptfor learning, he rebelled from the outset against a career of inaction. His lack of strength was never a check upon his high stomach; he wouldfight with boys of twice his size, and accept the certain defeat in acheerful spirit of dogged pugnacity. Moreover, if his arms were weak, his cunning was as keen-edged as his tongue; and, before his strickeneye had paled, he had commonly executed an ample vengeance upon hisenemy. Nor was it industry that placed him at the top of the class. Aready wit made him master of the knowledge he despised. But he would always desert his primer to follow the hangman's lumberingcart up Tyburn Hill, and, still a mere imp of mischief, he would runthe weary way from Kensington to Shoe Lane on the distant chance of acock-fight. He was present, so he would relate in after years, when SirThomas Jermin's man put his famous trick upon the pit. With a hundredpounds in his pocket and under his arm a dunghill cock, neatly trimmedfor the fray, the ingenious ruffian, as Briscoe would tell you, went offto Shoe Lane, persuaded an accomplice to fight the cock in Sir ThomasJermin's name, and laid a level hundred against his own bird. So loftywas Sir Thomas's repute that backers were easily found, but the dunghillrooster instantly showed a clean pair of heels, and the cheat wasjustified of his cunning. Thus Ralph Briscoe learnt the first lessons in that art of sharpingwherein he was afterwards an adept; and when he left school his headwas packed with many a profitable device which no book learning couldimpart. His father, however, still resolute that he should join anintelligent profession, sent him to Gray's Inn that he might study law. Here the elegance of his handwriting gained him a rapid repute; hisskill became the envy of all the lean-souled clerks in the Inn, and hemight have died a respectable attorney had not the instinct of sportforced him from the inkpot and parchment of his profession. Ill couldhe tolerate the monotony and restraint of this clerkly life. In his eyeslaw was an instrument, not of justice, but of jugglery. Men were born, said his philosophy, rather to risk their necks than ink their fingers;and if a bold adventure puts you in a difficulty, why, then, you hiresome straw-splitting attorney to show his cunning. Indeed, the study oflaw was for him, as it was for Falstaff, an excuse for many a bout andmerry-making. He loved his glass, and he loved his wench, and he loveda bull-baiting better than either. It was his boast, and Moll Cutpurse'scompliment, that he never missed a match in his life, and assuredly noman was better known in Paris Garden than the intrepid Ralph Briscoe. The cloistered seclusion of Gray's Inn grew daily more irksome. Therehe would sit, in mute despair, drumming the table with his fingers, and biting the quill, whose use he so bitterly contemned. Of winterafternoons he would stare through the leaded window-panes at thegaunt, leafless trees, on whose summits swayed the cawing rooks, until servitude seemed intolerable, and he prayed for the voice of thebearward that summoned him to Southwark. And when the chained bear, the familiar monkey on his back, followed the shrill bagpipe along thecurious street, Briscoe felt that blood, not ink, coursed in his veins, forgot the tiresome impediment of the law, and joined the throng, hungryfor this sport of kings. Nor was he the patron of an enterprise whereinhe dared take no part. He was as bold and venturesome as the bravestruffler that ever backed a dog at a baiting. When the bull, cruellysecured behind, met the onslaught of his opponents, throwing them off, now this side, now that, with his horns, Briscoe, lost in excitement, would leap into the ring that not a point of the combat should escapehim. So it was that he won the friendship of his illustrious benefactress, Moll Cutpurse. For, one day, when he had ventured too near the maddenedbull, the brute made a heave at his breeches, which instantly gave way;and in another moment he would have been gored to death, had not Mollseized him by the collar and slung him out of the ring. Thus did hiscourage ever contradict his appearance, and at the dangerous gameof whipping the blinded bear he had no rival, either for bravery oradroitness. He would rush in with uplifted whip until the breath of theinfuriated beast was hot upon his cheek, let his angry lash curl foran instant across the bear's flank, and then, for all his halting foot, leap back into safety with a smiling pride in his own nimbleness. His acquaintance with Moll Cutpurse, casually begun at a bull-baiting, speedily ripened, for her into friendship, for him into love. In this, the solitary romance of his life, Ralph Briscoe overtopped even his ownachievements of courage. The Roaring Girl was no more young, and yearshad not refined her character unto gentleness. It was still her habit toappear publicly in jerkin and galligaskins, to smoke tobacco in contemptof her sex, and to fight her enemies with a very fury of insolence. Instature she exceeded the limping clerk by a head, and she could pick himup with one hand, like a kitten. Yet he loved her, not for any graceof person, nor beauty of feature, nor even because her temperament wasundaunted as his own. He loved her for that wisest of reasons, which isno reason at all, because he loved her. In his eyes she was the Queen, not of Misrule, but of Hearts. Had a throne been his, she should haveshared it, and he wooed her with a shy intensity, which ennobled him, even in her austere regard. Alas! she was unable to return his passion, and she lamented her own obduracy with characteristic humour. She madeno attempt to conceal her admiration. 'A notable and famous person, ' shecalled him, confessing that, 'he was right for her tooth, and made toher mind in every part of him. ' He had been bred up in the same exerciseof bull-baiting, which was her own delight; she had always praised histowardliness, and prophesied his preferment. But when he paid hercourt she was obliged to decline the honour, while she esteemed thecompliment. In truth, she was completely insensible to passion, or, as she exclaimedin a phrase of brilliant independence, 'I should have hired him to myembraces. ' The sole possibility that remained was a Platonic friendship, andBriscoe accepted the situation in excellent humour. 'Ever since he cameto know himself, ' again it is Moll that speaks, 'he always deportedhimself to me with an abundance of regard, calling me his Aunt. ' Andhis aunt she remained unto the end, bound to him in a proper and naturalalliance. Different as they were in aspect, they were strangely alikein taste and disposition. Nor was the Paris Garden their onlymeeting-ground. His sorry sojourn in Gray's Inn had thrown him on the side of thelaw-breaker, and he had acquired a strange cunning in the difficult artof evading justice. Instantly Moll recognised his practical value, and, exerting all her talent for intrigue, presently secured for him theClerkship of Newgate. Here at last he found scope not only for hislearning, but for that spirit of adventure that breathed within him. Hismeagre acquaintance with letters placed him on a pinnacle high above hiscolleagues. Now and then a prisoner proved his equal in wit, but as hewas manifestly superior in intelligence to the Governor, the Ordinary, and all the warders, he speedily seized and hereafter retained the realsovereignty of Newgate. His early progress was barred by envy and contempt. Why, asked the menin possession, should this shrivelled stranger filch our privileges? AndBriscoe met their malice with an easy smile, knowing that at all pointshe was more than their match. His alliance with Moll stood him ingood stead, and in a few months the twain were the supreme arbitersof English justice. Should a highwayman seek to save his neck, he mustfirst pay a fat indemnity to the Newgate Clerk, but, since Moll was theappointed banker of the whole family, she was quick to sanction whateverprice her accomplice suggested. And Briscoe had a hundred other trickswhereby he increased his riches and repute. There was no debtor cameto Newgate whom the Clerk would not aid, if he believed the kindnessprofitable. Suppose his inquiries gave an assurance of his victim'srecovery, he would house him comfortably, feed him at his own table, lend him money, and even condescend to win back the generous loan by thedice-box. His civility gave him a general popularity among the prisoners, and hisappearance in the Yard was a signal for a subdued hilarity. He drankand gambled with the roysterers; he babbled a cheap philosophy with theerudite; and he sold the necks of all to the highest bidder. Though nowand again he was convicted of mercy or revenge, he commonly held himselfaloof from human passions, and pursued the one sane end of life in aneasy security. The hostility of his colleagues irked him but little. A few tags of Latin, the friendship of Moll, and a casual threat ofexposure frightened the Governor into acquiescence, but the Ordinary wasmore difficult of conciliation. The Clerk had not been long in Newgatebefore he saw that between the reverend gentleman and himself therecould be naught save war. Hitherto the Ordinary had reserved to hisown profit the right of intrigue; he it was who had received thehard-scraped money of the sorrowing relatives, and untied the noose whenit seemed good to him. Briscoe insisted upon a division of labour. 'Itis your business, ' he said, 'to save the scoundrels in the other world. Leave to me the profit of their salvation in this. ' And the Clerktriumphed after his wont: freedom jingled in his pocket; he doled outcomfort, even life, to the oppressed; and he extorted a comfortablefortune in return for privileges which were never in his gift. Without the walls of Newgate the house of his frequentation was the 'DogTavern. ' Thither he would wander every afternoon to meet his clients andto extort blood-money. In this haunt of criminals and pettifoggers noman was better received than the Newgate Clerk, and while he assumed amanner of generous cordiality, it was a strange sight to see him wincewhen some sturdy ruffian slapped him too strenuously upon the back. Hehad a joke and a chuckle for all, and his merry quips, dry as they were, were joyously quoted to all new-comers. His legal ingenuity appearedmiraculous, and it was confidently asserted in the Coffee House that hecould turn black to white with so persuasive an argument that there wasno Judge on the Bench to confute him. But he was not omnipotent, and hiszeal encountered many a serious check. At times he failed to save thenecks even of his intimates, since, when once a ruffian was notorious, Moll and the Clerk fought vainly for his release. Thus it was thatCheney, the famous wrestler, whom Ralph had often backed against allcomers, died at Tyburn. He had been taken by the troopers red-handedupon the highway. Seized after a desperate resistance, he was woundedwellnigh to death, and Briscoe quoted a dozen precedents to prove thathe was unfit to be tried or hanged. Argument failing, the munificentClerk offered fifty pounds for the life of his friend. But to nopurpose: the valiant wrestler was carried to the cart in a chair, and solifted to the gallows, which cured him of his gaping wounds. When the Commonwealth administered justice with pedantic severity, Briscoe's influence still further declined. There was no longer scopein the State for men of spirit; even the gaols were handed over to thestern mercy of crop-eared Puritans; Moll herself had fallen upon eviltimes; and Ralph Briscoe determined to make a last effort for wealthand retirement. At the very moment when his expulsion seemed certain, an heiress was thrown into Newgate upon a charge of murdering a tooimportunate suitor. The chain of evidence was complete: the daggerplunged in his heart was recognised for her own; she was seen to decoyhim to the secret corner of a wood, where his raucous love-making wassilenced for ever. Taken off her guard, she had even hinted confessionof her crime, and nothing but intrigue could have saved her gentleneck from the gallows. Briscoe, hungry for her money-bags, promisedassistance. He bribed, he threatened, he cajoled, he twisted the lawas only he could twist it, he suppressed honest testimony, he procuredfalse; in fine, he weakened the case against her with so resistless aneffrontery, that not the Hanging Judge himself could convict the poorinnocent. At the outset he had agreed to accept a handsome bribe, but as the trialapproached, his avarice increased, and he would be content with nothingless than the lady's hand and fortune. Not that he loved her; his heartwas long since given to Moll Cutpurse; but he knew that his careerof depredation was at an end, and it became him to provide for hisdeclining years. The victim repulsed his suit, regretting a thousandtimes that she had stabbed her ancient lover. At last, bidden summarilyto choose between Death and the Clerk, she chose the Clerk, and thusRalph Briscoe left Newgate the richest squire in a western county. Henceforth he farmed his land like a gentleman, drank with those of hisneighbours who would crack a bottle with him, and unlocked the strangestores of his memory to bumpkins who knew not the name of Newgate. Stilldevoted to sport, he hunted the fox, and made such a bull-ring as hisyouthful imagination could never have pictured. So he lived a life ofcountry ease, and died a churchwarden. And he deserved his prosperity, for he carried the soul of Falstaff in the shrunken body of JusticeShallow. GILDEROY AND THE SIXTEEN-STRING JACK I--GILDEROY HE stood six feet ten in his stockinged feet, and was the tallestruffian that ever cut a purse or held up a coach on the highway. Amass of black hair curled over a low forehead, and a glittering eyeintensified his villainous aspect; nor did a deep scar, furrowing hischeek from end to end, soften the horror of his sudden apparition. Valiant men shuddered at his approach; women shrank from the distantecho of his name; for fifteen years he terrorised Scotland fromCaithness to the border; and the most partial chronicler never insultedhis memory with the record of a good deed. He was born to a gentle family in the Calendar of Monteith, and wascelebrated even in boyhood for his feats of strength and daring. Whilestill at school he could hold a hundredweight at arm's-length, andcrumple up a horseshoe like a wisp of hay. The fleetest runner, the mostdesperate fighter in the country, he was already famous before his namewas besmirched with crime, and he might have been immortalised as theHercules of the seventeenth century, had not his ambition been otherwiseflattered. At the outset, though the inclination was never lacking, he knew small temptation to break the sterner laws of conduct. Hispleasures were abundantly supplied by his father's generosity, and hehad no need to refrain from such vices as became a gentleman. If he wasno drunkard, it was because his head was equal to the severest strain, and, despite his forbidding expression, he was always a successfulbreaker of hearts. His very masterfulness overcame the most stubbornresistance; and more than once the pressure of his dishonourable suitconverted hatred into love. At the very time that he was denounced forScotland's disgrace, his praises were chanted in many a dejected ballad. 'Gilderoy was a bonny boy, ' sang one heart-broken maiden: Had roses till his shoon, His stockings were of silken soy, Wi' garters hanging doon. But in truth he was admired less for his amiability than for thatquality of governance which, when once he had torn the decalogue topieces, made him a veritable emperor of crime. His father's death was the true beginning of his career. A modestpatrimony was squandered in six months, and Gilderoy had no pennyleft wherewith to satisfy the vices which insisted upon indulgence. Hedemanded money at all hazards, and money without toil. For a while hismore loudly clamant needs were fulfilled by the amiable simplicity ofhis mother, whom he blackmailed with insolence and contempt. And whenshe, wearied by his shameless importunity, at last withdrew hersupport, he determined upon a monstrous act of vengeance. With a nobleaffectation of penitence he visited his home; promised reform at supper;and said good-night in the broken accent of reconciliation. No soonerwas the house sunk in slumber than he crawled stealthily upstairs inorder to forestall by theft a promised generosity. He opened the door ofthe bed-chamber in a hushed silence; but the wrenching of the cofferlidawoke the sleeper, and Gilderoy, having cut his mother's throat withan infamous levity, seized whatever money and jewels were in the house, cruelly maltreated his sister, and laughingly burnt the house to theground, that the possibility of evidence might be destroyed. Henceforth his method of plunder was assured. It was part of hisphilosophy to prevent detection by murder, and the flames from theburning walls added a pleasure to his lustful eye. His march acrossScotland was marked by slaughtered families and ruined houses. Plunderwas the first cause of his exploits, but there is no doubt that deathand arson were a solace to his fierce spirit; and for a while thisgiant of cruelty knew neither check nor hindrance. Presently it becamea superstition with him that death was the inevitable accompanimentof robbery, and, as he was incapable of remorse, he grew callous, andneglected the simplest precautions. At Dunkeld he razed a rifled houseto the ground, and with the utmost effrontery repeated the performanceat Aberdeen. But at last he had been tracked by a company of soldiers, who, that justice might not be cheated of her prey, carried him to gaol, where after the briefest trial he was condemned to death. Gilderoy, however, was still master of himself. His immense strength notonly burst his bonds, but broke prison, and this invincible Samsonwas once more free in Aberdeen, inspiring that respectable city with alegendary dread. The reward of one hundred pounds was offered in vain. Had he shown himself on the road in broad daylight, none would havedared to arrest him, and it was not until his plans were deliberatelylaid, that he crossed the sea. The more violent period of his careerwas at an end. Never again did he yield to his passion for burningand sudden death; and, if the world found him unconquerable, hisself-control is proved by the fact that in the heyday of his strengthhe turned from his unredeemed brutality to a gentler method. He nowdeserted Scotland for France, with which, like all his countrymen, heclaimed a cousinship; and so profoundly did he impose upon Paris withhis immense stature, his elegant attire, his courtly manners (for he wascourtesy itself, when it pleased him), that he was taken for an eminentscholar, or at least a soldier of fortune. Prosperity might doubtless have followed a discreet profession, butGilderoy must still be thieving, and he reaped a rich harvest among theunsuspicious courtiers of France. His most highly renowned exploit wasperformed at St. Denis, and the record of France's humiliation is stilltreasured. The great church was packed with ladies of fashion and theirdevout admirers. Richelieu attended in state; the king himself shoneupon the assembly. The strange Scotsman, whom no man knew and all menwondered at, attracted a hundred eyes to himself and his magnificentequipment. But it was not his to be idle, and at the very moment whereatMass was being sung, he contrived to lighten Richelieu's pocket of apurse. The king was a delighted witness of the theft; Gilderoy, assumingan air of facile intimacy, motioned him to silence; and he, deeming ita trick put upon Richelieu by a friend, hastened, at the service-end, toask his minister if perchance he had a purse of gold upon him. Richelieuinstantly discovered the loss, to the king's uncontrolled hilarity, which was mitigated when it was found that the thief, having emptied theking's pocket at the unguarded moment of his merriment, had left themboth the poorer. Such were Gilderoy's interludes of gaiety; and when you remember thecynical ferocity of his earlier performance, you cannot deny him thecredit of versatility. He stayed in France until his ominous reputationwas too widely spread; whereupon he crossed the Pyrenees, travellinglike a gentleman, in a brilliant carriage of his own. From Spain hecarried off a priceless collection of silver plate; and he returned tohis own country, fatigued, yet unsoftened, by the grand tour. Meanwhile, a forgetful generation had not kept his memory green. The monster, who punished Scotland a year ago with fire and sword, had passedinto oblivion, and Gilderoy was able to establish for himself a newreputation. He departed as far as possible from his ancient custom, joined the many cavaliers, who were riding up and down the country, pistol in hand, and presently proved a dauntless highwayman. He hadnot long ridden in the neighbourhood of Perth before he met the Earl ofLinlithgow, from whom he took a gold watch, a diamond ring, and eightyguineas. Being an outlaw, he naturally espoused the King's cause, andwould have given a year of his life to meet a Regicide. Once upon atime, says rumour, he found himself face to face with Oliver Cromwell, whom he dragged from his coach, set ignominiously upon an ass, and soturned adrift with his feet tied under the beast's belly. The story isincredible, not only because the loyal historians of the time causedOliver to be robbed daily on every road in Great Britain, but becauseour Gilderoy, had he ever confronted the Protector, most assuredly wouldnot have allowed him to escape with his life. Tired of scouring the highway, Gilderoy resolved upon anotherenterprise. He collected a band of fearless ruffians, and placed himselfat their head. With this army to aid, he harried Sutherland and theNorth, lifting cattle, plundering homesteads, and stopping wayfarerswith a humour and adroitness worthy of Robin Hood. No longer a lawlessadventurer, he made his own conditions of life, and forced the people toobey them. He who would pay Gilderoy a fair contribution ran no risk oflosing his sheep or oxen. But evasion was impossible, and the smallestsuspicion of falsehood was punished by death. The peaceably inclinedpaid their toll with regret; the more daring opposed the raider to theirmiserable undoing; the timid satisfied the utmost exactions of Gilderoy, and deemed themselves fortunate if they left the country with theirlives. Thus Scotland became a land of dread; the most restless man withinher borders hardly dare travel beyond his byre. The law was powerlessagainst this indomitable scourge, and the reward of a thousand markswould have been offered in vain, had not Gilderoy's cruelty estrangedhis mistress. This traitress--Peg Cunningham was her name--less foravarice than in revenge for many insults and infidelities, at lastbetrayed her master. Having decoyed him to her house, she admitted fiftyarmed men, and thus imagined a full atonement for her unnumbered wrongs. But Gilderoy was triumphant to the last. Instantly suspecting thetreachery of his mistress, he burst into her bed-chamber, and, that shemight not enjoy the price of blood, ripped her up with a hanger. Then heturned defiant upon the army arrayed against him, and killed eight menbefore the others captured him. Disarmed after a desperate struggle, he was loaded with chains andcarried to Edinburgh, where he was starved for three days, and thenhanged without the formality of a trial on a gibbet, thirty feethigh, set up in the Grassmarket. Even then Scotland's vengeance wasunsatisfied. The body, cut down from its first gibbet, was hung inchains forty feet above Leith Walk, where it creaked and gibbered as awarning to evildoers for half a century, until at last the inhabitantsof that respectable quarter petitioned that Gilderoy's bones shouldcease to rattle, and that they should enjoy the peace impossible for hisjingling skeleton. Gilderoy was no drawing-room scoundrel, no villain of schoolgirlromance. He felt remorse as little as he felt fear, and there was nocrime from whose commission he shrank. Before his death he confessed tothirty-seven murders, and bragged that he had long since lost count ofhis robberies and rapes. Something must be abated for boastfulness. Butafter all deduction there remains a tale of crime that is unsurpassed. His most admirably artistic quality is his complete consistence. He wasa ruffian finished and rotund; he made no concession, he betrayed noweakness. Though he never preached a sermon against the human race, hepractised a brutality which might have proceeded from a gospel of hate. He spared neither friends nor relatives, and he murdered his own motherwith as light a heart as he sent a strange widow of Aberdeen to herdeath. His skill is undoubted, and he proved by the discipline of hisband that he was not without some talent of generalship. But he owedmuch of his success to his physical strength, and to the temperament, which never knew the scandal of hesitancy or dread. A born marauder, he devoted his life to his trade; and, despite histravels in France and Spain, he enjoyed few intervals of merriment. Even the humour, which proved his redemption, was as dour and grim asScotland can furnish at her grimmes: and dourest. Here is a specimenwill serve as well as another: three of Gilderoy's gang had beenhanged according to the sentence of a certain Lord of Session, andthe Chieftain, for his own vengeance and the intimidation of justice, resolved upon an exemplary punishment. He waylaid the Lord of Session, emptied his pockets, killed his horses, broke his coach in pieces, and having bound his lackeys, drowned them in a pond. This was but theprelude of revenge, for presently (and here is the touch of humour) hemade the Lord of Session ride at dead of night to the gallows, whereonthe three malefactors were hanging. One arm of the crossbeams was stilluntenanted. 'By my soul, mon, ' cried Gilderoy to the Lord of Session, 'as this gibbet is built to break people's craigs, and is not uniformwithout another, I must e'en hang you upon the vacant beam. ' Andstraightway the Lord of Session swung in the moonlight, and Gilderoy hadcracked his black and solemn joke. This sense of fun is the single trait which relieves the colossalturpitude of Gilderoy. And, though even his turpitude was melodramaticin its lack of balance, it is a unity of character which is thefoundation of his greatness. He was no fumbler, led away from hispurpose by the first diversion; his ambition was clear before him, andhe never fell below it. He defied Scotland for fifteen years, was hangedso high that he passed into a proverb, and though his handsome, sinisterface might have made women his slaves, he was never betrayed by passion(or by virtue) to an amiability. II--SIXTEEN-STRING JACK THE 'Green Pig' stood in the solitude of the North Road. Its simplefront, its neatly balanced windows, curtained with white, gave it an airof comfort and tranquillity. The smoke which curled from its hospitablechimney spoke of warmth and good fare. To pass it was to spurn the last chance of a bottle for many a wearymile, and the prudent traveller would always rest an hour by its amplefireside, or gossip with its fantastic hostess. Now, the hostess ofthe little inn was Ellen Roach, friend and accomplice of Sixteen-StringJack, once the most famous woman in England, and still after a wearystretch at Botany Bay the strangest of companions, the most buxom ofspinsters. Her beauty was elusive even in her triumphant youth, andmiddle-age had neither softened her traits nor refined her expression. Her auburn hair, once the glory of Covent Garden, was fading to awithered grey; she was never tall enough to endure an encroachingstoutness with equanimity; her dumpy figure made you marvel at her pastsuccess; and hardship had furrowed her candid brow into wrinkles. Butwhen she opened her lips she became instantly animated. With a glassbefore her on the table, she would prattle frankly and engagingly ofthe past. Strange cities had she seen; she had faced the dangers of anadventurous life with calmness and good temper. And yet Botany Bay, with its attendant horrors, was already fading from her memory. Inimagination she was still with her incomparable hero, and it was hersolace, after fifteen years, to sing the praise and echo the perfectionsof Sixteen-String Jack. 'How well I remember, ' she would murmur, as though unconscious of heraudience, 'the unhappy day when Jack Rann was first arrested. It was May, and he came back travel-stained and weary in the brilliantdawn. He had stopped a one-horse shay near the nine-mile stone on theHounslow Road--every word of his confession is burnt into my brain--andhad taken a watch and a handful of guineas. I was glad enough of themoney, for there was no penny in the house, and presently I sent themaid-servant to make the best bargain she could with the watch. But thesilly jade, by the saddest of mishaps, took the trinket straight to thevery man who made it, and he, suspecting a theft, had us both arrested. Even then Jack might have been safe, had not the devil prompted me tospeak the truth. Dismayed by the magistrate, I owned, wretched womanthat I was, that I had received the watch from Rann, and in two hoursJack also was under lock and key. Yet, when we were sent for trialI made what amends I could. I declared on oath that I had never seenSixteen-String Jack in my life; his name came to my lips by accident;and, hector as they would, the lawyers could not frighten me to anacknowledgment. Meanwhile Jack's own behaviour was grand. I was theproudest woman in England as I stood by his side in the dock. When youcompared him with Sir John Fielding, you did not doubt for an instantwhich was the finer gentleman. And what a dandy was my Jack! Though hecame there to answer for his life, he was all ribbons and furbelows. Hisirons were tied up with the daintiest blue bows, and in the breast ofhis coat he carried a bundle of flowers as large as a birch-broom. Hisneck quivered in the noose, yet he was never cowed to civility. 'I knowno more of the matter than you do, ' he cried indignantly, 'nor half somuch neither, ' and if the magistrate had not been an ill-mannered oaf, he would not have dared to disbelieve my true-hearted Jack. That timewe escaped with whole skins; and off we went, after dinner, to Vauxhall, where Jack was more noticed than the fiercest of the bloods, and wherehe filled the heart of George Barrington with envy. Nor was he idle, despite his recent escape: he brought away two watches and three pursesfrom the Garden, so that our necessities were amply supplied. Ah, Ishould have been happy in those days if only Jack had been faithful. But he had a roving eye and a joyous temperament; and though he lovedme better than any of the baggages to whom he paid court, he would notvisit me so often as he should. Why, once he was hustled off to BowStreet because the watch caught him climbing in at Doll Frampton'swindow. And she, the shameless minx, got him off by declaring in opencourt that she would be proud to receive him whenever he would deign toring at her bell. That is the penalty of loving a great man: you mustneeds share his affection with a set of unworthy wenches. Yet Jack wasalways kind to me, and I was the chosen companion of his pranks. 'Never can I forget the splendid figure he cut that day at BagniggeWells. We had driven down in our coach, and all the world marvelled atour magnificence. Jack was brave in a scarlet coat, a tambour waistcoat, and white silk stockings. From the knees of his breeches streamed thestrings (eight at each), whence he got his name, and as he pluckedoff his lace-hat the dinner-table rose at him. That was a moment worthliving for, and when, after his first bottle, Jack rattled the glasses, and declared himself a highwayman, the whole company shuddered. "But, myfriends, " quoth he, "to-day I am making holiday, so that you have naughtto fear. " When the wine 's in, the wit 's out, and Jack could never stayhis hand from the bottle. The more he drank, the more he bragged, until, thoroughly fuddled, he lost a ring from his finger, and charged themiscreants in the room with stealing it. "However, " hiccupped he, "'tis a mere nothing, worth a paltry hundred pounds--less than a lazyevening's work. So I'll let the trifling theft pass. " But the cowardswere not content with Jack's generosity, and seizing upon him, theythrust him neck and crop through the window. They were seventeen to one, the craven-hearted loons; and I could but leave the marks of my nailson the cheek of the foremost, and follow my hero into the yard, where wetook coach, and drove sulkily back to Covent Garden. 'And yet he was not always in a mad humour; in fact, Sixteen-StringJack, for all his gaiety, was a proud, melancholy man. The shadow of thetree was always upon him, and he would make me miserable by talking ofhis certain doom. "I have a hundred pounds in my pocket, " he would say;"I shall spend that, and then I shan't last long. " And though I neverthought him serious, his prophecy came true enough. Only a fewmonths before the end we had visited Tyburn together. With his usualcarelessness, he passed the line of constables who were on guard. "It is very proper, " said he, in his jauntiest tone, "that I should be aspectator on this melancholy occasion. " And though none of the dullardstook his jest, they instantly made way for him. For my Jack was alwaysa gentleman, though he was bred to the stable, and his bitterest enemycould not have denied that he was handsome. His open countenance wasas honest as the day, and the brown curls over his forehead were moreelegant than the smartest wig. Wherever he went the world did himhonour, and many a time my vanity was sorely wounded. I was a prettygirl, mind you, though my travels have not improved my beauty; and I hadmany admirers before ever I picked up Jack Rann at a masquerade. Why, there was a Templar, with two thousand a year, who gave me a carriageand servants while I still lived at the dressmaker's in Oxford Street, and I was not out of my teens when the old Jew in St. Mary Axe took meinto keeping. But when Jack was by, I had no chance of admiration. Allthe eyes were glued upon him, and his poor doxy had to be content witha furtive look thrown over a stranger's shoulder. At Barnet races, theyear before they sent me across the sea, we were followed by a crowdthe livelong day; and truly Jack, in his blue satin waistcoat laced withsilver, might have been a peer. At any rate, he had not his equal on thecourse, and it is small wonder that never for a moment were we left toourselves. 'But happiness does not last for ever; only too often we were gravelledfor lack of money, and Jack, finding his purse empty, could do naughtelse than hire a hackney and take to the road again, while I used to lieawake listening to the watchman's raucous voice, and praying God tosend back my warrior rich and scatheless. So times grew more and moredifficult. Jack would stay a whole night upon the heath, and come homewith an empty pocket or a beggarly half crown. And there was nothing, after a shabby coat that he hated half so much as a sheriff's officer. "Learn a lesson in politeness, " he said to one of the wretches whodragged him off to the Marshalsea. "When Sir John Fielding's people comeafter me they use me genteelly; they only hold up a finger, beckon me, and I follow as quietly as a lamb. But you bluster and insult, as thoughyou had never dealings with gentlemen. " Poor Jack, he was of a proudstomach, and could not abide interference; yet they would never let himgo free. And he would have been so happy had he been allowed his ownway. To pull out a rusty pistol now and again, and to take a purse froma traveller--surely these were innocent pleasures, and he never meant tohurt a fellow-creature. But for all his kindness of heart, for all hislove of splendour and fine clothes, they took him at last. 'And this time, too, it was a watch which was our ruin. How often did Iwarn him: "Jack, " I would say, "take all the money you can. Guineas tellno tale. But leave the watches in their owners' fobs. " Alas! he did notheed my words, and the last man he ever stopped on the road was thatpompous rascal, Dr. Bell, then chaplain to the Princess Amelia. "Give meyour money, " screamed Jack, "and take no notice or I'll blow yourbrains out. " And the doctor gave him all that he had, the mean-spiriteddevil-dodger, and it was no more than eighteenpence. Now what should aman of courage do with eighteenpence? So poor Jack was forced to seizethe parson's watch and trinkets as well, and thus it was that a secondtime we faced the Blind Beak. When Jack brought home the watch, I was seized with a shudderingpresentiment, and I would have given the world to throw it out of thewindow. But I could not bear to see him pinched with hunger, and hehad already tossed the doctor's eighteenpence to a beggar woman. SoI trudged off to the pawnbroker's, to get what price I could, and Ibethought me that none would know me for what I was so far away asOxford Street. But the monster behind the counter had a quick suspicion, though I swear I looked as innocent as a babe; he discovered the ownerof the watch, and infamously followed me to my house. 'The next day we were both arrested, and once more we stood in the hot, stifling Court of the Old Bailey. Jack was radiant as ever, the onespot of colour and gaiety in that close, sodden atmosphere. When we weretaken from Bow Street a thousand people formed our guard of honour, andfor a month we were the twin wonders of London. The lightest word, thefleetest smile of the renowned highwayman, threw the world into a fitof excitement, and a glimpse of Rann was worth a king's ransom. I couldlook upon him all day for nothing! And I knew what a fever of fearthrobbed behind his mask of happy contempt. Yet bravely he played thepart unto the very end. If the toasts of London were determined to gazeat him, he assured them they should have a proper salve for theireyes. So he dressed himself as a light-hearted sportsman. His coat andwaistcoat were of pea-green cloth; his buckskin breeches were spotlesslynew, and all tricked out with the famous strings; his hat was boundround with silver cords; and even the ushers of the Court were touchedto courtesy. He would whisper to me, as we stood in the dock, "Cheer up, my girl. I have ordered the best supper that Covent Garden can provide, and we will make merry to-night when this foolish old judge has done hisduty. " The supper was never eaten. Through the weary afternoon we waitedfor acquittal. The autumn sun sank in hopeless gloom. The wretched lampstwinkled through the jaded air of the court-house. In an hour I liveda thousand years of misery, and when the sentence was read, the wordscarried no sense to my withered brain. It was only in my cell I realisedthat I had seen Jack Rann for the last time; that his pea-green coatwould prove a final and ineffaceable memory. 'Alas! I, who had never been married, was already a hempen widow; butI was too hopelessly heartbroken for my lover's fate to think of my ownpaltry hardship. I never saw him again. They told me that he sufferedat Tyburn like a man, and that he counted upon a rescue to the veryend. They told me (still bitterer news to hear) that two days beforehis death he entertained seven women at supper, and was in the wildesthumour. This almost broke my heart; it was an infidelity committed onthe other side of the grave. But, poor Jack, he was a good lad, andloved me more than them all, though he never could be faithful to me. 'And thus, bidding the drawer bring fresh glasses, Ellen Roach would endher story. Though she had told it a hundred times, at the last words atear always sparkled in her eye. She lived without friend and withoutlover, faithful to the memory of Sixteen-String Jack, who for her wasthe only reality in the world of shades. Her middle-age was as distantas her youth. The dressmaker's in Oxford Street was as vague a dream asthe inhospitable shore of Botany Bay. So she waited on to a weary eld, proud of the 'Green Pig's' well-ordered comfort, prouder still that fortwo years she shared the glory of Jack Rann, and that she did not deserther hero, even in his punishment. III--A PARALLEL (GILDEROY AND SIXTEEN-STRING JACK) THEIR closest parallel is the notoriety which dogged them from the veryday of their death. Each, for his own exploits, was the most famousman of his time, the favourite of broadsides, the prime hero of theballad-mongers. And each owed his fame as much to good fortune as tomerit, since both were excelled in their generation by more skilfulscoundrels. If Gilderoy was unsurpassed in brutality, he fellimmeasurably below Hind in artistry and wit, nor may he be comparedto such accomplished highwaymen as Mull Sack or the Golden Farmer. Hismethod was not elevated by a touch of the grand style. He stamped allthe rules of the road beneath his contemptuous foot, and cared not whatenormity he committed in his quest for gold. Yet, though he lived inthe true Augustan age, he yielded to no one of his rivals in gloriousrecognition. So, too, Jack Rann, of the Sixteen Strings, was a nearcontemporary of George Barrington. While that nimble-fingered prig wasmaking a brilliant appearance at Vauxhall, and emptying the pockets ofhis intimates, Rann was riding over Hounslow Heath, and flashing hispistol in the eye of the wayfarer. The very year in which Jack dancedhis last jig at Tyburn, Barrington had astonished London by a fruitlessattempt to steal Prince Orloff's miraculous snuff-box. And noteven Ellen Roach herself would have dared to assert that Rann wasBarrington's equal in sleight of hand. But Rann holds his own againstthe best of his craft, with an imperishable name, while a host of moredistinguished cracksmen are excluded even from the Newgate Calendar. In truth, there is one quality which has naught to do with artisticsupremacy; and in this quality both Rann and Gilderoy were rich beyondtheir fellows. They knew (none better) how to impose upon the world. Hadtheir deserts been even less than they were, they would still havebeen bravely notorious. It is a common superstition that the talent foradvertisement has but a transitory effect, that time sets all men intheir proper places. Nothing can be more false; for he who has once declared himself amongthe great ones of the earth, not only holds his position while he lives, but forces an unreasoning admiration upon the future. Though he declinesfrom the lofty throne, whereon his own vanity and love of praise haveset him, he still stands above the modest level which contents thegenuinely great. Why does Euripides still throw a shadow upon theworthier poets of his time? Because he had the faculty of displacement, because he could compel the world to profess an interest not only inhis work but in himself. Why is Michael Angelo a loftier figure in thehistory of art than Donatello, the supreme sculptor of his time? BecauseDonatello had not the temper which would bully a hundred popes, andextract a magnificent advertisement from each encounter. Why doesShelley still claim a larger share of the world's admiration than Keats, his indubitable superior? Because Shelley was blessed or cursed with thetrick of interesting the world by the accidents of his life. So by a similar faculty Gilderoy and Jack Rann have kept themselves andtheir achievements in the light of day. Had they lived in the nineteenthcentury they might have been the vendors of patent pills, or thechairmen of bubble companies. Whatever trade they had followed, theirnames would have been on every hoarding, their wares would have beenpuffed in every journal. They understood the art of publicity betterthan any of their contemporaries, and they are remembered not becausethey were the best thieves of their time, but because they weredetermined to interest the people in their misdeeds. Gilderoy'sbrutality, which was always theatrical, ensured a constant remembrance, and the lofty gallows added to his repute; while the brilliantinspiration of the strings, which decorated Rann's breeches, wassufficient to conquer death. How should a hero sink to oblivion who hadchosen for himself so splendid a name as Sixteen-String Jack? So far, then, their achievement is parallel. And parallel also is theirtaste for melodrama. Each employed means too great or too violent forthe end in view. Gilderoy burnt houses and ravished women, when hissole object was the acquisition of money. Sixteen-String Jack terrifiedBagnigge Wells with the dreadful announcement that he was a highwayman, when his kindly, stupid heart would have shrunk from the shedding ofa drop of blood. So they both blustered through the world, the one indeed, the other in word; and both played their parts with so littlerefinement that they frightened the groundlings to a timid admiration. Here the resemblance is at an end. In the essentials of their tradeGilderoy was a professional, Rann a mere amateur. They both bullied;but, while Sixteen-String Jack was content to shout threats, and pick uphalf-a-crown, Gilderoy breathed murder, and demanded a vast ransom. Only once in his career did the 'disgraceful Scotsman' become gay anddebonair. Only once did he relax the tension of his frown, and pickpockets with the lightness and freedom of a gentleman. It was on hisvoyage to France that he forgot his old policy of arson and pillage, andtruly the Court of the Great King was not the place for his rapaciouscruelty. Jack Rann, on the other hand, would have taken life as aprolonged jest, if Sir John Fielding and the sheriffs had not checkedhis mirth. He was but a bungler on the road, with no more resourcethan he might have learned from the common chap-book, or from thedying speeches, hawked in Newgate Street. But he had a fine talent formerriment; he loved nothing so well as a smart coat and a pretty woman. Thieving was no passion with him, but a necessity. How could he dance ata masquerade or court his Ellen with an empty pocket? So he took to theroad as the sole profession of an idle man, and he bullied his way fromHounslow to Epping in sheer lightness of heart. After all, to rob Dr. Bell of eighteenpence was the work of a simpleton. It was a very prettytaste which expressed itself in a pea-green coat and deathless strings;and Rann will keep posterity's respect rather for the accessories ofhis art than for the art itself. On the other hand, you cannot imagineGilderoy habited otherwise than in black; you cannot imagine thismonstrous matricide taking pleasure in the smaller elegancies of life. From first to last he was the stern and beetle-browed marauder, whowould have despised the frippery of Sixteen-String Jack as vehemently ashis sudden appearance would have frightened the foppish lover of EllenRoach. Their conduct with women is sufficient index of their character. JackRann was too general a lover for fidelity. But he was amiable, even inhis unfaithfulness; he won the undying affection of his Ellen; he neverstood in the dock without a nosegay tied up by fair and nimble fingers;he was attended to Tyburn by a bevy of distinguished admirers. Gilderoy, on the other hand, approached women in a spirit of violence. His Sadictemper drove him to kill those whom he affected to love. And his crueltywas amply repaid. While Ellen Roach perjured herself to save the lover, to whose memory she professed a lifelong loyalty, it was Peg Cunninghamwho wreaked her vengeance in the betrayal of Gilderoy. He remained trueto his character, when he ripped up the belly of his betrayer. This wasthe closing act of his life. Rann, also, was consistent, even to the gallows. The night before hisdeath he entertained seven women at supper, and outlaughed them all. Thecontrast is not so violent as it appears. The one act is melodrama, theother farce. And what is farce, but melodrama in a happier shape? THOMAS PURENEY THOMAS PURENEY, Archbishop among Ordinaries, lived and preached inthe heyday of Newgate. His was the good fortune to witness Sheppard'sencounter with the topsman, and to shrive the battered soul of JonathanWild. Nor did he fall one inch below his opportunity. Designed byProvidence to administer a final consolation to the evil-doer, hepermitted no false ambition to distract his talent. As some men are bornfor the gallows, so he was born to thump the cushion of a prison pulpit;and his peculiar aptitude was revealed to him before he had time tospend his strength in mistaken endeavour. For thirty years his squat, stout figure was amiably familiar to allsuch as enjoyed the Liberties of the Jug. For thirty years his mottlednose and the rubicundity of his cheeks were the ineffaceable ensigns ofhis intemperance. Yet there was a grimy humour in his forbidding aspect. The fusty black coat, which sat ill upon his shambling frame, was allbesmirched with spilled snuff, and the lees of a thousand quart pots. The bands of his profession were ever awry upon a tattered shirt. Hisancient wig scattered dust and powder as he went, while a single buckleof some tawdry metal gave a look of oddity to his clumsy, slipshodfeet. A caricature of a man, he ambled and chuckled and seized the easypleasures within his reach. There was never a summer's day but he caughtupon his brow the few faint gleams of sunlight that penetrated thegloomy yard. Hour after hour he would sit, his short fingers hardlylinked across his belly, drinking his cup of ale, and puffing at ahalf-extinguished tobacco-pipe. Meanwhile he would reflect upon thosetriumphs of oratory which were his supreme delight. If it fell on aMonday that he took the air, a smile of satisfaction lit up hisfat, loose features, for still he pondered the effect of yesterday'smasterpiece. On Saturday the glad expectancy of to-morrow lent hima certain joyous dignity. At other times his eye lacked lustre, hisgesture buoyancy, unless indeed he were called upon to follow thecart to Tyburn, or to compose the Last Dying Speech of some notoriousmalefactor. Preaching was the master passion of his life. It was the pulpit thatreconciled him to exile within a great city, and persuaded him to theenjoyment of roguish company. Those there were who deemed his careerunfortunate; but a sense of fitness might have checked their pity, andit was only in his hours of maudlin confidence that the Reverend Thomasconfessed to disappointment. Born of respectable parents in the Countyof Cambridgeshire, he nurtured his youth upon the exploits of JamesHind and the Golden Farmer. His boyish pleasure was to lie in theditch, which bounded his father's orchard, studying that now forgottenmasterpiece, 'There's no Jest like a True Jest. ' Then it was that hefelt 'immortal longings in his blood. ' He would take to the road, so heswore, and hold up his enemies like a gentleman. Once, indeed, he wassurprised by the clergyman of the parish in act to escape from therectory with two volumes of sermons and a silver flagon. The divine wasminded to speak seriously to him concerning the dreadful sin of robbery, and having strengthened him with texts and good counsel, to send himforth unpunished. 'Thieving and covetousness, ' said the parson, 'mustinevitably bring you to the gallows. If you would die in your bed, repent you of your evildoing, and rob no more. ' The exhortation was notlost upon Pureney, who, chastened in spirit, straightly prevailed uponhis father to enter him a pensioner at Corpus Christi College in theUniversity of Cambridge, that at the proper time he might take orders. At Cambridge he gathered no more knowledge than was necessary for hisprofession, and wasted such hours as should have been given to study indrinking, dicing, and even less reputable pleasures. Yet repentancewas always easy, and he accepted his first curacy, at Newmarket, witha brave heart and a good hopefulness. Fortunate was the choice of thisearly cure. Had he been gently guided at the outset, who knows but hemight have lived out his life in respectable obscurity? But Newmarketthen, as now, was a town of jollity and dissipation, and Pureney yieldedwithout persuasion to the pleasures denied his cloth. There was ever afire to extinguish at his throat, nor could he veil his wanton eye atthe sight of a pretty wench. Again and again the lust of preachingurged him to repent, yet he slid back upon his past gaiety, untilParson Pureney became a byword. Dismissed from Newmarket in disgrace, hewandered the country up and down in search of a pulpit, but so infamousbecame the habit of his life that only in prison could he find anaudience fit and responsive. And, in the nick, the chaplaincy of Newgate fell vacant. Here wasthe occasion to temper dissipation with piety, to indulge the twofoldambition of his life. What mattered it, if within the prison walls hedipped his nose more deeply into the punch-bowl than became a divine?The rascals would but respect him the more for his prowess, and knitmore closely the bond of sympathy. Besides, after preaching and punchhe best loved a penitent, and where in the world could he find so rich acrop of erring souls ripe for repentance as in gaol? Henceforth he mightthreaten, bluster, and cajole. If amiability proved fruitless he wouldput cruelty to the test, and terrify his victims by a spirited referenceto Hell and to that Burning Lake they were so soon to traverse. At last, thought he, I shall be sure of my effect, and the prospect flatteredhis vanity. In truth, he won an immediate and assured success. Likethe common file or cracksman, he fell into the habit of the place, intriguing with all the cleverness of a practised diplomatist, andsetting one party against the other that he might in due season decidethe trumpery dispute. The trusted friend of many a distinguished prigand murderer, he so intimately mastered the slang and etiquette of theJug, that he was appointed arbiter of all those nice questions of honourwhich agitated the more reputable among the cross-coves. But these werethe diversions of a strenuous mind, and it was in the pulpit or in thecloset that the Reverend Thomas Pureney revealed his true talent. As the ruffian had a sense of drama, so he was determined that his wordsshould scald and bite the penitent. When the condemned pew was full ofa Sunday his happiness was complete. Now his deep chest would hurlsalvo on salvo of platitudes against the sounding-board; now his voice, lowered to a whisper, would coax the hopeless prisoners to prepare theirsouls. In a paroxysm of feigned anger he would crush the cushion withhis clenched fist, or leaning over the pulpit side as though to approachthe nearer to his victims, would roll a cold and bitter eye upon them, as of a cat watching caged birds. One famous gesture was irresistible, and he never employed it but some poor ruffian fell senseless to thefloor. His stumpy fingers would fix a noose of air round some imaginedneck, and so devoutly was the pantomime studied that you almost heardthe creak of the retreating cart as the phantom culprit was turned off. But his conduct in the pulpit was due to no ferocity of temperament. Hemerely exercised his legitimate craft. So long as Newgate supplied himwith an enforced audience, so long would he thunder and bluster at thewrongdoer according to law and the dictates of his conscience. Many, in truth, were his triumphs, but, as he would mutter in hisgarrulous old age, never was he so successful as in the last exhortationdelivered to Matthias Brinsden. Now, Matthias Brinsden incontinentlymurdered his wife because she harboured too eager a love of thebrandy-shop. A model husband, he had spared no pains in her correction. He had flogged her without mercy and without result. His one designwas to make his wife obey him, which, as the Scriptures say, allwives should do. But the lust of brandy overcame wifely obedience, andBrinsden, hoping for the best, was constrained to cut a hole in herskull. The next day she was as impudent as ever, until Matthias roseyet more fiercely in his wrath, and the shrew perished. Then wasThomas Pureney's opportunity, and the Sunday following the miscreant'scondemnation he delivered unto him and seventeen other malefactors themoving discourse which here follows: 'We shall take our text, ' gruffed the Ordinary 'From out the Psalms:"Bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days. "And firstly, we shall expound to you the heinous sin of murder, which isunlawful (1) according to the Natural Laws, (2) according to the JewishLaw, (3) according to the Christian Law, proportionably stronger. ByNature 'tis unlawful as 'tis injuring Society: as 'tis robbing Godof what is His Right and Property; as 'tis depriving the Slain of thesatisfaction of Eating, Drinking, Talking, and the Light of the Sun, which it is his right to enjoy. And especially 'tis unlawful, as itis sending a Soul naked and unprepared to appear before a wrathful andavenging Deity without time to make his Soul composedly or to listen tothe thoughtful ministrations of one (like ourselves) soundly versed inDivinity. By the Jewish Law 'tis forbidden, for is it not written (Gen. Ix. 6): "Whosoever sheddeth Man's Blood, by Man his Blood shall beshed"? And if an Eye be given for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth, how shallthe Murderer escape with his dishonoured Life? 'Tis further forbidden bythe Christian Law (proportionably stronger). But on this head we would speak no word, for were not you all, Omiserable Sinners, born not in the Darkness of Heathendom, but in theburning Light of Christian England? 'Secondly, we will consider the peculiar wickedness of Parricide, andespecially the Murder of a Wife. What deed, in truth, is more heinousthan that a man should slay the Parent of his own Children, the Wife hehad once loved and chose out of all the world to be a Companion of hisDays; the Wife who long had shared his good Fortune and his ill, whohad brought him with Pain and Anguish several Tokens and Badges ofAffection, the Olive Branches round about his Table? To embrew the handsin such blood is double Murder, as it murders not only the Person slain, but kills the Happiness of the orphaned Children, depriving them ofBread, and forcing them upon wicked Ways of getting a Maintenance, whichoften terminate in Newgate and an ignominious death. 'Bloodthirsty men, we have said, shall not live out half their Days. Andthink not that Repentance avails the Murderer. "Hell and Damnation arenever full" (Prov. Xxvii. 20), and the meanest Sinner shall find a placein the Lake which burns unto Eternity with Fire and Brimstone. Alas!your Punishment shall not finish with the Noose. Your "end is to beburned" (Heb. Vi. 8), to be burned, for the Blood that is shed criesaloud for Vengeance. ' At these words, as Pureney would relate with asmile of recollected triumph, Matthias Brinsden screamed aloud, and ashiver ran through the idle audience which came to Newgate on aBlack Sunday, as to a bull-baiting. Truly, the throng of thoughtlessspectators hindered the proper solace of the Ordinary's ministrations, and many a respectable murderer complained of the intruding mob. But theOrdinary, otherwise minded, loved nothing so well as a packed house, andthough he would invite the criminal to his private closet, and comforthis solitude with pious ejaculations, he would neither shield him fromcuriosity, nor tranquillise his path to the unquenchable fire. Not only did he exercise in the pulpit a poignant and visible influence. He boasted the confidence of many heroes. His green old age cherishedno more famous memory than the friendship of Jonathan Wild. He had knownthe Great Man at his zenith; he had wrestled with him in the hour ofdiscomfiture; he had preached for his benefit that famous sermon on thetext: 'Hide Thy Face from my sins, and blot out all my Iniquities'; hehad witnessed the hero's awful progress from Newgate to Tyburn; he hadseen him shiver at the nubbing-cheat; he had composed for him a lastdying speech, which did not shame the king of thief-takers, and whosesale brought a comfortable profit to the widow. Jonathan, on his side, had shown the Ordinary not a little condescension. It had been his whim, on the eve of his marriage, to present Mr. Pureney with a pair of whitegloves, which were treasured as a priceless relic for many a year. Andwhen he paid his last, forced visit to Newgate, he gave the Chaplain, for a pledge of his esteem, that famous silver staff, which he carried, as a badge of authority from the Government, the better to keep thepeople in awe, and favour the enterprises of his rogues. Only one cloud shadowed this old and equal friendship. Jonathan hadentertained the Ordinary with discourse so familiar, they had cracked somany a bottle together, that when the irrevocable sentence was passed, when he who had never shown mercy, expected none, the Great Man foundthe exhortations of the illiterate Chaplain insufficient for his highpurpose. 'As soon as I came into the condemned Hole, ' thus he wrote, 'Ibegan to think of making a preparation for my soul; and the better tobring my stubborn heart to repentance, I desired the advice of a man oflearning, a man of sound judgment in divinity, and therefore applicationbeing made to the Reverend Mr. Nicholson, he very Christian-like gaveme his assistance. ' Alas! Poor Pureney! He lacked subtlety, and he wasinstantly baffled, when the Great Man bade him expound the text: 'Cursedis every one that hangeth on a tree. ' The shiftiest excuse would havebrought solace to a breaking heart and conviction to a casuistbrain. Yet for once the Ordinary was at a loss, and Wild, finding himinsufficient for his purpose, turned a deaf ear to his ministrations. Thus he was rudely awakened from the dream of many sleepless nights. Hislarge heart almost broke at the neglect. But if his more private counsels were scorned, he still had the joyof delivering a masterpiece from the pulpit, of using 'all the meansimaginable to make Wild think of another world, ' and of seeing him asneatly turned off as the most exacting Ordinary could desire. And whatinmate of Newgate ever forgot the afternoon of that glorious day (Maythe 24th, 1725)? Mr. Pureney returned to his flock, fortified withpunch and good tidings. He pictured the scene at Tyburn with a bibulouscircumstance, which admirably became his style, rejoicing, as he hasrejoiced ever since, that, though he lost a friend, the honest rogue wassaved at last from the machinations of the thief-taker. So he basked and smoked and drank his ale, retelling the ancientstories, and hiccuping forth the ancient sermons. So, in the fadingtwilight of life, he smiled the smile of contentment, as became one whohad emptied more quarts, had delivered more harrowing discourses, andhad lived familiarly with more scoundrels than any devil-dodger of hisgeneration. SHEPPARD AND CARTOUCHE I--JACK SHEPPARD IT was midnight when Jack Sheppard reached the leads, wearied by hismagical achievement, and still fearful of discovery. The 'jolly pair ofhandcuffs, ' provided by the thoughtful Governor, lay discarded in hisdistant cell; the chains which a few hours since had grappled him to thefloor encumbered the now useless staple. No trace of the ancient slaverydisgraced him save the iron anklets which clung about his legs; thoughmany a broken wall and shattered lock must serve for evidence of hisprowess on the morrow. The Stone-Jug was all be-chipped and shattered. From the castle he had forced his way through a nine-foot wall intothe Red Room, whose bolts, bars, and hinges he had ruined to gain theChapel. The road thence to the roof and to freedom was hindered by threestubborn iron doors; yet naught stood in the way of Sheppard's genius, and he was sensible, at last, of the night air chill upon his cheek. But liberty was not yet: there was still a fall of forty feet, and hemust needs repass the wreckage of his own making to filch the blanketsfrom his cell. In terror lest he should awaken the Master-Side Debtors, he hastened back to the roof, lashed the coverlets together, and, as thecity clocks clashed twelve, he dropped noiselessly upon the leads ofa turner's house, built against the prison's outer wall. Behind himNewgate was cut out a black mass against the sky; at his feet glimmeredthe garret window of the turner's house, and behind the winking casementhe could see the turner's servant going to bed. Through her chamber laythe road to glory and Clare Market, and breathlessly did Sheppard watchtill the candle should be extinguished and the maid silenced in sleep. In his anxiety he must tarry--tarry; and for a weary hour he kicked hisheels upon the leads, ambition still too uncertain for quietude. Yethe could not but catch a solace from his splendid craft. Said he tohimself: 'Am I not the most accomplished slip-string the world hasknown? The broken wall of every round house in town attests my bravery. Light-limbed though I be, have I not forced the impregnable Castleitself? And my enemies--are they not to-day writhing in distress ? Thehead of Blueskin, that pitiful thief, quivers in the noose; and JonathanWild bleeds at the throat from the dregs of a coward's courage. What atriumph shall be mine when the Keeper finds the stronghold tenantless!' Now, unnumbered were the affronts he had suffered from the Keeper'simpertinence, and he chuckled aloud at his own witty rejoinder. Only twodays since the Gaoler had caught him tampering with his irons. 'Youngman, ' he had said, 'I see what you have been doing, but the affairbetwixt us stands thus: It is your business to make your escape, andmine to take care you shall not. ' Jack had answered coolly enough: 'Thenlet's both mind our own business. ' And it was to some purpose that hehad minded his. The letter to his baffled guardian, already sketchedin his mind, tickled him afresh, when suddenly he leaps to his feet andbegins to force the garret window. The turner's maid was a heavy sleeper, and Sheppard crept from hergarret to the twisted stair in peace. Once, on a lower floor, his heartbeat faster at the trumpetings of the turner's nose, but he knew nocheck until he reached the street door. The bolt was withdrawn in aninstant, but the lock was turned, and the key nowhere to be found. However, though the risk of disturbance was greater than in Newgate, the task was light enough: and with an iron link from his fetter, and arusty nail which had served him bravely, the box was wrenched off in atrice, and Sheppard stood unattended in the Old Bailey. At first he wasminded to make for his ancient haunts, or to conceal himself within theLiberty of Westminster; but the fetter-locks were still upon hislegs, and he knew that detection would be easy as long as he was thusembarrassed. Wherefore, weary and an-hungered, he turned his stepsnorthward, and never rested until he had gained Finchley Common. At break of day, when the world re-awoke from the fear of thieves, hefeigned a limp at a cottage door, and borrowed a hammer to straighten apinching shoe. Five minutes behind a hedge, and his anklets had droppedfrom him; and, thus a free man, he took to the high road. After all hewas persuaded to desert London and to escape a while from the sturdyembrace of Edgworth Bess. Moreover, if Bess herself were in the lock-up, he still feared the interested affection of Mistress Maggot, that otherdoxy, whose avarice would surely drive him upon a dangerous enterprise;so he struck across country, and kept starvation from him by pettytheft. Up and down England he wandered in solitary insolence. Once, saith rumour, his lithe apparition startled the peace of Nottingham;once, he was wellnigh caught begging wort at a brew-house in ThamesStreet. But he might as well have lingered in Newgate as waste hisopportunity far from the delights of Town; the old lust of life stillimpelled him, and a week after the hue-and-cry was raised he crept atdead of night down Drury Lane. Here he found harbourage with a friendlyfence, Wild's mortal enemy, who promised him a safe conduct across theseas. But the desire of work proved too strong for prudence; and in afortnight he had planned an attack on the pawnshop of one Rawling, atthe Four Balls in Drury Lane. Sheppard, whom no house ever built with hands was strong enough tohold, was better skilled at breaking out than at breaking in, and itis remarkable that his last feat in the cracking of cribs was also hisgreatest. Its very conception was a masterpiece of effrontery. DruryLane was the thief-catcher's chosen territory; yet it was the Four Ballsthat Jack designed for attack, and watches, tie-wigs, snuff-boxeswere among his booty. Whatever he could not crowd upon his person hepresented to a brace of women. Tricked out in his stolen finery, hedrank and swaggered in Clare Market. He was dressed in a superb suit ofblack; a diamond fawney flashed upon his finger; his light tie-periwigwas worth no less than seven pounds; pistols, tortoise-shellsnuff-boxes, and golden guineas jostled one another in his pockets. Thus, in brazen magnificence, he marched down Drury Lane on a certainSaturday night in November 1724. Towards midnight he visited ThomasNicks, the butcher, and having bargained for three ribs of beef, carriedNicks with him to a chandler's hard by, that they might ratify thebargain with a dram. Unhappily, a boy from the 'Rose and Crown' soundedthe alarm; for coming into the chandler's for the empty ale-pots, heinstantly recognised the incomparable gaol-thief, and lost no time inacquainting his master. Now, Mr. Bradford, of the 'Rose and Crown, ' wasa head-borough, who, with the zeal of a triumphant Dogberry, summonedthe watch, and in less than half an hour Jack Sheppard was screamingblasphemies in a hackney-cab on his way home to Newgate. The Stone-Jug received him with deference and admiration. Three hundredpounds weight of irons were put upon him for an adornment, and theGovernor professed so keen a solicitude for his welfare that he neverleft him unattended. There was scarce a beautiful woman in London whodid not solace him with her condescension, and enrich him with hergifts. Not only did the President of the Royal Academy deign to painthis portrait, but (a far greater honour) Hogarth made him immortal. Even the King displayed a proper interest, demanding a full and preciseaccount of his escapes. The hero himself was drunk with flattery;he bubbled with ribaldry; he touched off the most valiant of hiscontemporaries in a ludicrous phrase. But his chief delight was toillustrate his prowess to his distinguished visitors, and nothingpleased him better than to slip in and out of his chains. Confronted with his judge, he forthwith proposed to rid himself of hishandcuffs, and he preserved until the fatal tree an illimitable pride inhis artistry. Nor would he believe in the possibility of death. To thevery last he was confirmed in the hope of pardon; but, pardon failinghim, his single consolation was that his procession from Westminsterto Newgate was the largest that London had ever known, and that inthe crowd a constable broke his leg. Even in the Condemned Hole he wasunreconciled. If he had broken the Castle, why should he not also evadethe gallows? Wherefore he resolved to carry a knife to Tyburn that hemight cut the rope, and so, losing himself in the crowd, ensure escape. But the knife was discovered by his warder's vigilance, and takenfrom him after a desperate struggle. At the scaffold he behaved withadmirable gravity: confessing the wickeder of his robberies, and askingpardon for his enormous crimes. 'Of two virtues, ' he boasted at theself-same moment that the cart left him dancing without the music, 'Ihave ever cherished an honest pride: never have I stooped to friendshipwith Jonathan Wild, or with any of his detestable thief-takers; and, though an undutiful son, I never damned my mother's eyes. ' Thus died Jack Sheppard; intrepid burglar and incomparable artist, who, in his own separate ambition of prison-breaking, remains, and will everremain, unrivalled. His most brilliant efforts were the result neitherof strength nor of cunning; for so slight was he of build, so deficientin muscle, that both Edgworth Bess and Mistress Maggot were wont tobang him to their own mind and purpose. And an escape so magnificentlyplanned, so bravely executed as was his from the Strong Room, is fargreater than a mere effect of cunning. Those mysterious gifts whichenable mankind to batter the stone walls of a prison, or to bend theiron bars of a cage, were pre-eminently his. It is also certain that hecould not have employed his gifts in a more reputable profession. II--LOUIS-DOMINIQUE CARTOUCHE Of all the heroes who have waged a private and undeclared war upon theirneighbours, Louis-Dominique Cartouche was the most generously endowed. It was but his resolute contempt for politics, his unswerving love ofplunder for its own sake, that prevented him from seizing a throne orquesting after the empire of the world. The modesty of his ambition setshim below Cæsar, or Napoleon, but he yields to neither in the geniusof success: whatever he would attain was his on the instant, nor didfailure interrupt his career, until treachery, of which he went inperpetual terror, involved himself and his comrades in ruin. His talentof generalship was unrivalled. None of the gang was permitted theliberty of a free-lance. By Cartouche was the order given, and so longas the chief was in repose, Paris might enjoy her sleep. When it pleasedhim to join battle a whistle was enough. Now, it was revealed to his intelligence that the professional thief, who devoted all his days and such of his nights as were spared fromdepredation to wine and women, was more readily detected than thevalet-de-chambre, who did but crack a crib or cry 'Stand and deliver!'on a proper occasion. Wherefore, he bade his soldiers take service inthe great houses of Paris, that, secure of suspicion, they mightstill be ready to obey the call of duty. Thus, also, they formed areconnoitring force, whose vigilance no prize might elude; and nowheredid Cartouche display his genius to finer purpose than in this prudentdisposition of his army. It remained only to efface himself, and thereinhe succeeded admirably by never sleeping two following nights in thesame house: so that, when Cartouche was the terror of Paris, when eventhe King trembled in his bed, none knew his stature nor could recognisehis features. In this shifting and impersonal vizard, he broke houses, picked pockets, robbed on the pad. One night he would terrify theFaubourg St. Germain; another he would plunder the humbler suburb of St. Antoine; but on each excursion he was companioned by experts, andthe map of Paris was rigidly apportioned among his followers. To eachdistrict a captain was appointed, whose business it was to apprehendthe customs of the quarter, and thus to indicate the proper season ofattack. Ever triumphant, with yellow-boys ever jingling in his pocket, Cartouchelived a life of luxurious merriment. A favourite haunt was a cabaretin the Rue Dauphine, chosen for the sanest of reasons, as his CaptainFerrand declared, that the landlady was a femme d'esprit. Here he wouldsit with his friends and his women, and thereafter drive his chariotacross the Pont Neuf to the sunnier gaiety of the Palais-Royal. Afinished dandy, he wore by preference a grey-white coat with silverbuttons; his breeches and stockings were on a famous occasion of blacksilk; while a sword, scabbarded in satin, hung at his hip. But if Cartouche, like many another great man, had the faculty ofenjoyment, if he loved wine and wit, and mistresses handsomely attiredin damask, he did not therefore neglect his art. When once the gang wasperfectly ordered, murder followed robbery with so instant a frequencythat Paris was panic-stricken. A cry of 'Cartouche' straightway ensuredan empty street. The King took counsel with his ministers: munificentrewards were offered, without effect. The thief was still at work in allsecurity, and it was a pretty irony which urged him to strip and kill onthe highway one of the King's own pages. Also, he did his work withso astonishing a silence, with so reasoned a certainty, that it seemedimpossible to take him or his minions red-handed. Before all, he discouraged the use of firearms. 'A pistol, ' hisphilosophy urged, 'is an excellent weapon in an emergency, but reserveit for emergencies. At close quarters it is none too sure; and why givethe alarm against yourself?' Therefore he armed his band with loadedstaves, which sent their enemies into a noiseless and fatal sleep. Thus was he wont to laugh at the police, deeming capture a plainimpossibility. The traitor, in sooth, was his single, irremediable fear, and if ever suspicion was aroused against a member of the gang, thatmember was put to death with the shortest shrift. It happened in the last year of Cartouche's supremacy that alily-livered comrade fell in love with a pretty dressmaker. Theindiscretion was the less pardonable since the dressmaker had a horrorof theft, and impudently tried to turn her lover from his trade. Cartouche, discovering the backslider, resolved upon a publicexhibition. Before the assembled band he charged the miscreantwith treason, and, cutting his throat, disfigured his face beyondrecognition. Thereafter he pinned to the corse the followinginscription, that others might be warned by so monstrous an example:'Ci git Jean Rebâti, qui a eu le traitement qu'il méritait: ceux qui enferont autant que lui peuvent attendre le même sort. ' Yet this was themurder that led to the hero's own capture and death. Du Châtelet, another craven, had already aroused the suspicions ofhis landlady: who, finding him something troubled the day after thetraitor's death, and detecting a spot of blood on his neckerchief, questioned him closely. The coward fumbling at an answer, she waspresently convinced of his guilt, and forthwith denounced him for amember of the gang to M. Pacome, an officer of the Guard. Straightly didM. Pacôme summon Du Chtelet, and, assuming his guilt for certitude, bade him surrender his captain. 'My friend, ' said he, 'I know you foran associate of Cartouche. Your hands are soiled with murder and rapine. Confess the hiding-place of Cartouche, or in twenty-four hours you arebroken on the wheel. ' Vainly did Du Châtelet protest his ignorance. M. Pacôme was resolute, and before the interview was over the robberconfessed that Cartouche had given him rendezvous at nine next day. In the grey morning thirty soldiers crept forth guided by the traitor, 'en habits de bourgeois et de chasseur, ' for the house where Cartouchehad lain. It was an inn, kept by one Savard, near la Haulte Borne de laCourtille; and the soldiers, though they lacked not numbers, approachedthe chieftain's lair shaking with terror. In front marched Du Châtelet;the rest followed in Indian file, ten paces apart. When the traitorreached the house, Savard recognised him for a friend, and entertainedhim with familiar speech. 'Is there anybody upstairs?' demanded DuChâtelet. 'No, ' replied Savard. 'Are the four women upstairs?' asked DuChâtelet again. 'Yes, they are, ' came the answer: for Savard knew thepassword of the day. Instantly the soldiers filled the tavern, and, mounting the staircase, discovered Cartouche with his three lieutenants, Balagny, Limousin, and Blanchard. One of the four still lay abed; butCartouche, with all the dandy's respect for his clothes, was mending hisbreeches. The others hugged a flagon of wine over the fire. So fell the scourge of Paris into the grip of justice. But once underlock and key, he displayed all the qualities which made him supreme. Hisgaiety broke forth into a light-hearted contempt of his gaolers, andthe Lieutenant Criminel, who would interrogate him, was covered withridicule. Not for an instant did he bow to fate: all shackled as he was, his legs engarlanded in heavy chains--which he called his garters--hetempered his merriment with the meditation of escape. From the first hedenied all knowledge of Cartouche, insisting that his name was CharlesBourguignon, and demanding burgundy, that he might drink to his countryand thus prove him a true son of the soil. Not even the presence of hismother and brother abashed him. He laughed them away as impostors, hiredby a false justice to accuse and to betray the innocent. No word ofconfession crossed his lips, and he would still entertain the officersof the law with joke and epigram. Thus he won over a handful of the Guard, and, begging for solitude, hestraightway set about escape with a courage and an address which JackSheppard might have envied. His delicate ear discovered that a cellarlay beneath his cell; and with the old nail which lies on the floor ofevery prison he made his way downwards into a boxmaker's shop. But abarking dog spoiled the enterprise: the boxmaker and his daughterwere immediately abroad, and once more Cartouche was lodged in prison, weighted with still heavier garters. Then came a period of splendid notoriety: he held his court, he gave aneasy rein to his wit, he received duchesses and princes with an air ofamiable patronage. Few there were of his visitants who left him withouta present of gold, and thus the universal robber was further rewarded byhis victims. His portrait hung in every house, and his thin, hard face, his dry, small features were at last familiar to the whole of France. M. Grandval made him the hero of an epic--'Le Vice Puni. ' Even the theatrewas dominated by his presence; and while Arlequin-Cartouche was greetedwith thunders of applause at the Italiens, the more serious Français setCartouche upon the stage in three acts, and lavished upon its theme theresources of a then intelligent art. M. Le Grand, author of the piece, deigned to call upon the king of thieves, spoke some words of argot withhim, and by way of conscience money gave him a hundred crowns. Cartouche set little store by such patronage. He pocketed the crowns, and then put an end to the comedy by threatening that if it were playedagain the companions of Cartouche would punish all such miscreants asdared to make him a laughing stock. For Cartouche would endure ridiculeat no man's hand. At the very instant of his arrest, all bare-footed ashe was, he kicked a constable who presumed to smile at his discomfiture. His last days were spent in resolute abandonment. True, he onceattempted to beat out his brains with the fetters that bound him;true, also, he took a poison that had been secretly conveyed within theprison. But both attempts failed, and, more scrupulously watched, he hadno other course than jollity. Lawyers and priests he visited with alike and bitter scorn, and when, on November 27, 1721, he was led to thescaffold, not a word of confession or contrition had been dragged fromhim. To the last moment he cherished the hope of rescue, and eagerly hescanned the crowd for the faces of his comrades. But the gang, trustingto its leader's nobility, had broken its oath. With contemptuous dignityCartouche determined upon revenge: proudly he turned to the priest, begging a respite and the opportunity of speech. Forgotten by hisfriends, he resolved to spare no single soul: he betrayed even hismistresses to justice. Of his gang, forty were in the service of Mlle. De Montpensier, whowas already in Spain; while two obeyed the Duchesse de Ventadour asvalets-de-pied. His confession, in brief, was so dangerous a document, it betrayed the friends and servants of so many great houses, that theofficers of the Law found safety for their patrons in its destruction, and not a line of the hero's testimony remains. The trial of hiscomrades dragged on for many a year, and after Cartouche had beencruelly broken on the wheel, not a few of the gang, of which he hadbeen at once the terror and inspiration, suffered a like fate. Such thecareer and such the fitting end of the most distinguished marauder theworld has known. Thackeray, with no better guide than a chap-book, wasminded to belittle him, now habiting him like a scullion, now sendinghim forth on some petty errand of cly-faking. But for all Thackeray'scontempt his fame is still undimmed, and he has left the reputation ofone who, as thief unrivalled, had scarce his equal as wit and dandyeven in the days when Louis the Magnificent was still a memory and anexample. III--A PARALLEL (SHEPPARD AND CARTOUCHE) IF the seventeenth century was the golden age of the hightobyman, it wasat the advent of the eighteenth that the burglar and street-robber pliedtheir trade with the most distinguished success, and it was the goodfortune of both Cartouche and Sheppard to be born in the nick of time. Rivals in talent, they were also near contemporaries, and the Scourge ofParis may well have been famous in the purlieus of Clare Market beforeJack the Slip-String paid the last penalty of his crimes. As each ofthese great men harboured a similar ambition, so their careers areclosely parallel. Born in a humble rank of life, Jack, like Cartouche, was the architect of his own fortune; Jack, like Cartouche, lived to beflattered by noble dames and to claim the solicitude of his Sovereign;and each owed his pre-eminence rather to natural genius than to asympathetic training. But, for all the Briton's artistry, the Frenchman was in all points saveone the superior. Sheppard's brain carried him not beyond the wants ofto-day and the extortions of Poll Maggot. Who knows but he might have been a respectable citizen, with never achance for the display of his peculiar talent, had not hunger and hismistress's greed driven him upon the pad? History records no brilliantrobbery of his own planning, and so circumscribed was his imaginationthat he must needs pick out his own friends and benefactors fordepredation. His paltry sense of discipline permitted him to be betrayedeven by his brother and pupil, and there was no cracksman of his timeover whose head he held the rod of terror. Even his hatred of JonathanWild was the result not of policy but of prejudice. Cartouche, on theother hand, was always perfect when at work. The master of himself, hewas also the master of his fellows. There was no detail of civil warthat he had not made his own, and he still remains, after nearly twocenturies, the greatest captain the world has seen. Never did he permitan enterprise to fail by accident; never was he impelled by hunger orimprovidence to fight a battle unprepared. His means were always neatlyfitted to their end, as is proved by the truth that, throughout hiscareer, he was arrested but once, and then not by his own inadvertencebut by the treachery of others. Yet from the moment of arrest Jack Sheppard asserted his magnificentsuperiority. If Cartouche was a sorry bungler at prison-breaking, Sheppard was unmatched in this dangerous art. The sport of the one wasto break in, of the other to break out. True, the Briton proved hisinferiority by too frequently placing himself under lock and key; butyou will forgive his every weakness for the unexampled skill wherewithhe extricated himself from the stubbornest dungeon. Cartouche wouldscarce have given Sheppard a menial's office in his gang. How cordiallySheppard would have despised Cartouche's solitary experiment in escape!To be foiled by a dog and a boxmaker's daughter! Would not that haveseemed contemptible to the master breaker of those unnumbered doors andwalls which separate the Castle from the freedom of Newgate roof? Such, then, is the contrast between the heroes. Sheppard claims ouradmiration for one masterpiece. Cartouche has a sheaf of works, whichshall carry him triumphantly to the remotest future. And when you forget a while professional rivalry, and consider thedelicacies of leisure, you will find the Frenchman's greatness stillindisputable. At all points he was the prettier gentleman. Sheppard, tobe sure, had a sense of finery, but he was so unused to grandeurthat vulgarity always spoiled his effects. When he hied him from thepawnshop, laden with booty, he must e'en cram what he could not wearinto his pockets; and doubtless his vulgar lack of reticence madedetection easier. Cartouche, on the other hand, had an unfailing senseof proportion, and was never more dressed than became the perfect dandy. He was elegant, he was polished, he was joyous. He drank wine, while theother soaked himself in beer; he despised whatever was common, while hisrival knew but the coarser flavours of life. The one was distinguished by a boisterous humour, a swaggering pride inhis own prowess; the wit of the other might be edged like a knife, norwould he ever appeal for a spectacle to the curiosity of the mob. Both were men of many mistresses, but again in his conduct with womenCartouche showed an honester talent. Sheppard was at once the prey andthe whipping-block of his two infamous doxies, who agreed in deformityof feature as in contempt for their lover. Cartouche, on the other hand, chose his cabaret for the wit of its patronne, and was always happy inthe elegance and accomplishment of his companions. One point oflikeness remains. The two heroes resembled each other not only in theirprofession, but in their person. Though their trade demanded physicalstrength, each was small and slender of build. 'A little, slight-limbedlad, ' says the historian of Sheppard. 'A thin, spare frame, ' sings thepoet of Cartouche. Here, then, neither had the advantage, and if in theshades Cartouche despises the clumsiness and vulgarity of his rival, Sheppard may still remember the glory of Newgate, and twit the Frenchmanwith the barking of the boxmaker's dog. But genius is the talent of thedead, and the wise, who are not partisans, will not deny to the one orto the other the possession of the rarer gift. VAUX TO Haggart, who babbled on the Castle Rock of Willie Wallace andwas only nineteen when he danced without the music; to Simms, aliasGentleman Harry, who showed at Tyburn how a hero could die; to GeorgeBarrington, the incomparably witty and adroit--to these a full meed ofhonour has been paid. Even the coarse and dastardly Freney has achieved, with Thackeray's aid (and Lever's) something of a reputation. ButJames Hardy Vaux, despite his eloquent bid for fame, has not found hisrhapsodist. Yet a more consistent ruffian never pleaded for mercy. Fromhis early youth until in 1819 he sent forth his Memoirs to the world, helived industriously upon the cross. There was no racket but he worked itwith energy and address. Though he practised the more glorious crafts ofpickpocket and shoplifter, he did not despise the begging-letter, andhe suffered his last punishment for receiving what another's courage hadconveyed. His enterprise was not seldom rewarded with success, and for adecade of years he continued to preserve an appearance of gentility; butit is plain, even from his own narrative, that he was scarce anartist, and we shall best understand him if we recognise that he wasa Philistine among thieves. He lived in an age of pocket-picking, andskill in this branch is the true test of his time. A contemporary ofBarrington, he had before him the most brilliant of examples, whichmight properly have enforced the worth of a simple method. But, thoughhe constantly brags of his success at Drury Lane, we take not hisgeneralities for gospel, and the one exploit whose credibilityis enforced with circumstance was pitiful both in conception andperformance. A meeting of freeholders at the 'Mermaid Tavern, ' Hackney, was the occasion, and after drawing blank upon blank, Vaux succeeded atlast in extracting a silver snuff-box. Now, his clumsiness had suggestedthe use of the scissors, and the victim not only discovered the scissionin his coat, but caught the thief with the implements of his art uponhim. By a miracle of impudence Vaux escaped conviction, but he deservedthe gallows for his want of principle, and not even sympathy could havelet drop a tear, had justice seized her due. On the straight or onthe cross the canons of art deserve respect; and a thief is great, not because he is a thief, but because, in filling his own pocket, hepreserves from violence the legitimate traditions of his craft. But it was in conflict with the jewellers that Vaux best proved hismettle. It was his wont to clothe himself 'in the most elegant attire, 'and on the pretence of purchase to rifle the shops of Piccadilly. For this offence--'pinching' the Cant Dictionary calls it--he did hislongest stretch of time, and here his admirable qualities of cunningand coolness found their most generous scope. A love of fine clotheshe shared with all the best of his kind, and he visited Mr Bilger--thejeweller who arrested him--magnificently arrayed. He wore a black coatand waistcoat, blue pantaloons, Hessian boots, and a hat 'in the extremeof the newest fashion. ' He was also resplendent with gold watch andeye-glass. His hair was powdered, and a fawney sparkled on his dexterfam. The booty was enormous, and a week later he revisited the shopon another errand. This second visit was the one flash of genius in asomewhat drab career: the jeweller was so completely dumfounded, thatVaux might have got clean away. But though he kept discreetly out ofsight for a while, at last he drifted back to his ancient boozing-ken, and was there betrayed to a notorious thief-catcher. The inevitablesentence of death followed. It was commuted after the fashion of thetime, and Vaux, having sojourned a while at the Hulks, sought for asecond time the genial airs of Botany Bay. His vanity and his laziness were alike invincible. He believed himselfa miracle of learning as well as a perfect thief, and physical toilwas the sole 'lay' for which he professed no capacity. For a whilehe corrected the press for a printer, and he roundly asserts that hisknowledge of literature and of foreign tongues rendered him invaluable. It was vanity again that induced him to assert his innocence when hewas lagged for so vulgar a crime as stealing a wipe from a tradesmanin Chancery Lane. At the moment of arrest he was on his way to purchasebase coin from a Whitechapel bit-faker: but, despite his nefariouserrand, he is righteously wrathful at what he asserts was an unjustconviction, and henceforth he assumed the crown of martyrdom. His firstand last ambition during the intervals of freedom was gentility, and solong as he was not at work he lived the life of a respectable grocer. Although the casual Cyprian flits across his page, he pursued the oneflame of his life for the good motive, and he affects to be a very modelof domesticity. The sentiment of piety also was strong upon him, and ifhe did not, like the illustrious Peace, pray for his jailer, he rivalledthe Prison Ordinary in comforting the condemned. Had it only been hisfate to die on the gallows, how unctuous had been his croak! The text of his 'Memoirs' having been edited, it is scarce possibleto define his literary talent. The book, as it stands, is an excellentpiece of narrative, but it loses somewhat by the pretence of style. Theman's invulnerable conceit prevented an absolute frankness, and there islittle enough hilarity to correct the acid sentiment and the intolerablevows of repentance. Again, though he knows his subject, and can patterflash with the best, his incorrigible respectability leads him to apethe manner of a Grub Street hack, and to banish to a vocabulary thosepearls of slang which might have added vigour and lustre to his somewhattiresome page. However, the thief cannot escape his inevitable defects. The vanity, the weakness, the sentimentality of those who are bornbeasts of prey, yet have the faculty of depredation only half-developed, are the foes of truth, and it is well to remember that the autobiographyof a rascal is tainted at its source. A congenial pickpocket, equippedwith the self-knowledge and the candour which would enable him torecognise himself an outlaw and justice his enemy rather than aninstrument of malice, would prove a Napoleon rather than a Vaux. So thatwe must e'en accept our Newgate Calendar with its many faults upon itshead, and be content. For it takes a man of genius to write a book, and the thief who turns author commonly inhabits a paradise of thesecond-rate. GEORGE BARRINGTON AS Captain Hind was master of the road, George Barrington was (andremains for ever) the absolute monarch of pickpockets. Though the art, superseding the cutting of purses, had been practised with courage andaddress for half a century before Barrington saw the light, it was hisown incomparable genius that raised thievery from the dangerous valleyof experiment, and set it, secure and honoured, upon the mountain heightof perfection. To a natural habit of depredation, which, being a manof letters, he was wont to justify, he added a sureness of hand, a fertility of resource, a recklessness of courage which drove hiscontemporaries to an amazed respect, and from which none but thePhilistine will withhold his admiration. An accident discovered histaste and talent. At school he attempted to kill a companion--the oneact of violence which sullies a strangely gentle career; and outragedat the affront of a flogging, he fled with twelve guineas and a goldrepeater watch. A vulgar theft this, and no presage of future greatness;yet it proves the fearless greed, the contempt of private property, which mark as with a stigma the temperament of the prig. His faculty didnot rust long for lack of use, and at Drogheda, when he was but sixteen, he encountered one Price, half barnstormer, half thief. Forthwith heembraced the twin professions, and in the interlude of more seriouspursuits is reported to have made a respectable appearance as Jaffier inVenice Preserved. For a while he dreamed of Drury Lane and glory; but anattachment for Miss Egerton, the Belvidera to his own Jaffier, was morecostly than the barns of Londonderry warranted, and, with Price for acolleague, he set forth on a tour of robbery, merely interrupted throughtwenty years by a few periods of enforced leisure. His youth, indeed, was his golden age. For four years he practised hisart, chilled by no shadow of suspicion, and his immunity was due aswell to his excellent bearing as to his sleight of hand. In one of thecountless chap-books which dishonour his fame, he is unjustly accusedof relying for his effects upon an elaborate apparatus, half knife, half scissors, wherewith to rip the pockets of his victims. The merebackbiting of envy! An artistic triumph was never won save by legitimatemeans; and the hero who plundered the Dulce of L--r at Ranelagh, whoemptied the pockets of his acquaintance without fear of exposure, who all but carried off the priceless snuff-box of Count Orloff, mostassuredly followed his craft in full simplicity and with a properscorn of clumsy artifice. At his first appearance he was the master, sumptuously apparelled, with Price for valet. At Dublin his birth andquality were never questioned, and when he made a descent upon Londonit was in company with Captain W. H--n, who remained for years his loyalfriend. He visited Brighton as the chosen companion of Lord Ferrersand the wicked Lord Lyttelton. His manners and learning were alikeirresistible. Though the picking of pockets was the art and interest ofhis life, he was on terms of easy familiarity with light literature, and he considered no toil too wearisome if only his conversation mightdazzle his victims. Two maxims he charactered upon his heart: the one, never to run a large risk for a small gain; the other, never to forgetthe carriage and diction of a gentleman. He never stooped to pilfer, until exposure and decay had weakened hishand. In his first week at Dublin he carried off £1000, and it was onlyhis fateful interview with Sir John Fielding that gave him poverty for abedfellow. Even at the end, when he slunk from town to town, a notoriousoutlaw, he had inspirations of his ancient magnificence, and--atChester--he eluded the vigilance of his enemies and captured£600, wherewith he purchased some months of respectability. Now, respectability was ever dear to him, and it was at once his pleasure andprofit to live in the highest society. Were it not blasphemy to sullyBarrington with slang you would call him a member of the swell-mob, but, having cultivated a grave and sober style for himself, he recoiled inhorror from the flash lingo, and his susceptibility demands respect. He kept a commonplace book! Was ever such thrift in a thief? Whateverimages or thoughts flashed through his brain, he seized them on paper, even 'amidst the jollity of a tavern, or in the warmth of an interestingconversation. ' Was it then strange that he triumphed as a man offashionable and cultured leisure? He would visit Ranelagh with themost distinguished, and turn a while from epigram and jest to empty thepocket of a rich acquaintance. And ever with so tactful a certainty, with so fine a restraint of the emotions, that suspicion waspreposterous. To catalogue his exploits is superfluous, yet let it berecorded that once he went to Court, habited as a clergyman, and camehome the richer for a diamond order, Lord C--'s proudest decoration. Even the assault upon Prince Orloff was nobly planned. Barrington hadprecise intelligence of the marvellous snuff-box--the Empress's own giftto her lover; he knew also how he might meet the Prince at Drury Lane;he had even discovered that the Prince for safety hid the jewel in hisvest. But the Prince felt the Prig's hand upon the treasure, and gave aninstant alarm. Over-confidence, maybe, or a too liberal dinner was thecause of failure, and Barrington, surrounded in a moment, was speedilyin the lock-up. It was the first rebuff that the hero had received, andstraightway his tact and ingenuity left him. The evidence was faulty, the prosecution declined, and naught was necessary for escape savepresence of mind. Even friends were staunch, and had Barrington told hiscustomary lie, his character had gone unsullied. Yet having posed forhis friends as a student of the law, at Bow Street he must needs declarehimself a doctor, and the needless discrepancy ruined him. Though heescaped the gallows, there was an end to the diversions of intellect andfashion; as he discovered when he visited the House of Lords to hear anappeal, and Black Rod ejected him at the persuasion of Mr. G--. As yetunused to insult, he threatened violence against the aggressor, andfinding no bail he was sent on his first imprisonment to the Bridewellin Tothill Fields. Rapid, indeed, was the descent. At the first grip ofadversity, he forgot his cherished principles, and two years later theloftiest and most elegant gentlemen that ever picked a pocket was at theHulks--for robbing a harlot at Drury Lane! Henceforth, his insolenceand artistry declined, and, though to the last there were intervals ofgrandeur, he spent the better part of fifteen years in the commission ofcrimes, whose very littleness condemned them. At last an exile from St. James's and Ranelagh, he was forced into a society which still furtherdegraded him. Hitherto he had shunned the society of professed thieves;in his golden youth he had scorned to shelter him in the flash kens, which were the natural harbours of pickpockets. But now, says hisbiographer, he began to seek evil company, and, the victim of his ownfame, found safety only in obscene concealment. At the Hulks he recovered something of his dignity, and discretionrendered his first visit brief enough. Even when he was committed on asecond offence, and had attempted suicide, he was still irresistible, and he was discharged with several years of imprisonment to run. But, in truth, he was born for honour and distinction, and common actions, common criminals, were in the end distasteful to him. In his heydayhe stooped no further than to employ such fences as might profitablydispose of his booty, and the two partners of his misdeeds were bothremarkable. James, the earlier accomplice affected clerical attire, and in 1791 'wasliving in a Westphalian monastery, to which he some years ago retired, in an enviable state of peace and penitence, respected for his talents, and loved for his amiable manners, by which he is distinguished in aneminent degree. ' The other ruffian, Lowe by name, was known to his ownBloomsbury Square for a philanthropic and cultured gentleman, yet onlysuicide saved him from the gallows. And while Barrington was wise in thechoice of his servants, his manners drove even strangers to admiration. Policemen and prisoners were alike anxious to do him honour. Once whenhe needed money for his own defence, his brother thieves, whom he hadever shunned and despised, collected £100 for the captain of theirguild. Nor did gaoler and judge ever forget the respect due to agentleman. When Barrington was tried and condemned for the theft of Mr. Townsend's watch at Enfield Races--September 15, 1790, was the day ofhis last transgression--one knows not which was the more eloquent in hisrespect, the judge or the culprit. But it was not until the pickpocket set out for Botany Bay that he tookfull advantage of his gentlemanly bearing. To thrust 'Mr. ' Barringtoninto the hold was plainly impossible, even though transportationfor seven years was his punishment. Wherefore he was admitted tothe boatswain's mess, was allowed as much baggage as a first-classpassenger, and doubtless beguiled the voyage (for others) with theinformation of a well-stored mind. By an inspiration of luck he checkeda mutiny, holding the quarter-deck against a mob of ruffians withno weapon but a marline-spike. And hereafter, as he tells you in his'Voyage to New South Wales, ' he was accorded the fullest liberty to comeor go. He visited many a foreign port with the officers of the ship; hepacked a hundred note-books with trite and superfluous observations;he posed, in brief, as the captain of the ship without responsibility. Arrived at Port Jackson, he was acclaimed a hero, and received withobsequious solicitude by the Governor, who promised that his 'futuresituation should be such as would render his banishment from England aslittle irksome as possible. ' Forthwith he was appointed high constableof Paramatta, and, like Vautrin, who might have taken the youthfulBarrington for another Rastignac, he ended his days the honourablecustodian of less fortunate convicts. Or, as a broadside ballad has it, He left old Drury's flash purlieus, To turn at last a copper. Never did he revert to his ancient practice. If in his youth he hadlived the double-life with an effrontery and elegance which Brodiehimself never attained, henceforth his career was single in itsinnocence. He became a prig in the less harmful and more offensivesense. After the orthodox fashion he endeared himself to all who knewhim, and ruled Paramatta with an equable severity. Having cultivated thehumanities for the base purposes of his trade, he now devoted himselfto literature with an energy of dulness, becoming, as it were, a liberaleducation personified. His earlier efforts had been in verse, and youwonder that no enterprising publisher had ventured on a limited edition. Time was he composed an ode to Light, and once recovering from a fevercontracted at Ballyshannon, he addressed a few burning lines to Hygeia: Hygeia! thou whose eyes display The lustre of meridian day; and so on for endless couplets. Then, had he not celebrated in immortalverse his love for Miss Egerton, untimely drowned in the waters ofthe Boyne? But now, as became the Constable of Paramatta, he chose thesterner medium, and followed up his 'Voyage to New South Wales' withseveral exceeding trite and valuable histories. His most ambitious work was dedicated in periods of unctuous pietyto his Majesty King George III. , and the book's first sentence ischaracteristic of his method and sensibility: 'In contemplating theorigin, rise, and fall of nations, the mind is alternately filled witha mixture of sacred pain and pleasure. ' Would you read further? Then youwill find Fauna and Flora, twin goddesses of ineptitude, flitting acrossthe page, unreadable as a geographical treatise. His first masterpiecewas translated into French, anno VI. , and the translator apologises thatwar with England alone prevents the compilation of a suitable biography. Was ever thief treated with so grave a consideration? Then another work was prefaced by the Right Hon. William Eden, andall were 'embellished with beautiful coloured plates, ' and ran throughseveral editions. Once only did he return to poetry, the favoured mediumof his youth, and he returned to write an imperishable line. Even thenhis pedantry persuaded him to renounce the authorship, and to disparagethe achievement. The occasion was the opening of a theatre at Sydney, wherein the parts were sustained by convicts. The cost of admission tothe gallery was one shilling, paid in money, flour, meat, or spirits. The play was entitled The Revenge and the Hotel, and Barrington providedthe prologue, which for one passage is for ever memorable. Thus it runs: From distant climes, o'er widespread seas, we come, Though not with much eclat or beat of drum; True patriots we, for be it understood, We left our country for our country's good. No private views disgraced our generous zeal, What urged our travels was our country's weal; And none will doubt, but that our emigration Has proved most useful to the British nation. 'We left our country for our country's good. ' That line, thrownfortuitously into four hundred pages of solid prose, has emerged tobecome the common possession of Fleet Street. It is the man's one titleto literary fame, for spurning the thievish practice he knew so well, he was righteously indignant when The London Spy was fathered uponhim. Though he emptied his contemporary's pockets of many thousands, he enriched the Dictionary of Quotations with one line, which will berepeated so long as there is human hand to wield a pen. And, if the HighConstable of Paramatta was tediously respectable, George Barrington, thePrig, was a man of genius. THE SWITCHER AND GENTLEMAN HARRY I--THE SWITCHER DAVID HAGGART was born at Canonmills, with no richer birthright thanthievish fingers and a left hand of surpassing activity. The son of agamekeeper, he grew up a long-legged, red-headed callant, lurking in thesombre shadow of the Cowgate, or like the young Sir Walter, championingthe Auld Town against the New on the slopes of Arthur's Seat. Kippingwas his early sin; but the sportsman's instinct, born of his father'strade, was so strong within him, that he pinched a fighting cock beforehe was breeched, and risked the noose for horse-stealing when marblesshould have engrossed his boyish fancy. Turbulent and lawless, hebitterly resented the intolerable restraint of a tranquil life, and, atlast, in the hope of a larger liberty, he enlisted for a drummer in theNorfolk Militia, stationed at the moment in Edinburgh Castle. A brief, insubordinate year, misspent in his country's service, proved himhopeless of discipline: he claimed his discharge, and henceforth he wasfree to follow the one craft for which nature and his own ambition hadmoulded him. Like Chatterton, like Rimbaud, Haggart came into the full possession ofhis talent while still a child. A Barrington of fourteen, he knew everyturn and twist of his craft, before he escaped from school. His youthfulnecessities were munificently supplied by facile depredation, and theonly hindrance to immediate riches was his ignorance of flash kens wherehe might fence his plunder. Meanwhile he painted his soul black withwickedness. Such hours as he could snatch from the profitable conductof his trade he devoted to the austere debauchery of Leith or the GoldenAcre. Though he knew not the seduction of whisky, he missed never adance nor a raffle, joining the frolics of prigs and callets in completeforgetfulness of the shorter catechism. In vain the kirk compared him toa 'bottle in the smoke'; in vain the minister whispered of hell and thegallows; his heart hardened, as his fingers grew agile, and when, atsixteen, he left his father's house for a sporting life, he had not hisequal in the three kingdoms for cunning and courage. His first accomplice was Barney M'Guire, who--until a fourteen stretchsent him to Botany Bay--played Clytus to David's Alexander, and it wasat Portobello Races that their brilliant partnership began. HithertoHaggart had worked by stealth; he had tracked his booty under the cloudof night. Now was the moment to prove his prowess in the eye of day, tobreak with a past which he already deemed ignoble. His heart leaped withthe occasion: he tackled his adventure with the hot-head energy of a newmember, big with his maiden speech. The victim was chosen in an instant:a backer, whose good fortune had broken the bookmakers. There wasno thief on the course who did not wait, in hungry appetence, thesportsman's descent from the stand; yet the novice outstripped them all. 'I got the first dive at his keek-cloy, ' he writes in his simple, heroicstyle, 'and was so eager on my prey, that I pulled out the pocket alongwith the money, and nearly upset the gentleman. ' A steady brain savedhim from the consequence of an o'erbuoyant enthusiasm. The notes werepassed to Barney in a flash, and when the sportsman turned upon hisassailant, Haggart's hands were empty. Thereupon followed an infinite series of brilliant exploits. With Barneyto aid, he plundered the Border like a reiver. He stripped the yeomenof Tweedside with a ferocity which should have avenged the disgrace ofFlodden. More than once he ransacked Ecclefechan, though it is unlikelythat he emptied the lean pocket of Thomas Carlyle. There was not agaff from Newcastle to the Tay which he did not haunt with sedulousperseverance; nor was he confronted with failure, until his figurebecame a universal terror. His common method was to price a horse, andwhile the dealer showed Barney the animal's teeth, Haggart would slipunder the uplifted arm, and ease the blockhead of his blunt. Arrogant inhis skill, delighted with his manifold triumphs, Haggart led a life ofunbroken prosperity under the brisk air of heaven, and, despite therisk of his profession, he remained two years a stranger to povertyand imprisonment. His worst mishap was to slip his forks into an emptypocket, or to encounter in his cups a milvadering horse-dealer; but hisjoys were free and frank, while he exulted in his success with a boyishglee. 'I was never happier in all my life than when I fingered all thismoney, ' he exclaims when he had captured the comfortable prize of twohundred pounds. And then he would make merry at Newcastle or York, forgetting the knowing ones for a while, going abroad in white cape andtops, and flicking his leg like a gentleman with a dandy whip. But atlast Barney and a wayward ambition persuaded him to desert his propercraft for the greater hazard of cracking a crib, and thus he wasinvolved in his ultimate ruin. He incurred and he deserved the untowardfate of those who overlook their talents' limitation; and when thismaster of pickpockets followed Barney through the window of a secludedhouse upon the York Road, he might already have felt the noosetightening at his neck. The immediate reward of this bungled attack wasthirty pounds, but two days later he was committed with Barney tothe Durham Assizes, where he exchanged the obscurity of the perfectcraftsman for the notoriety of the dangerous gaol-bird. For the moment, however, he recovered his freedom: breaking prison, hestraightway conveyed a fiddlestick to his comrade, and in a twinklingwas at Newcastle again, picking up purses well lined with gold, androbbing the bumpkins of their scouts and chats. But the time of securitywas overpast. Marked and suspicious, he began to fear the solitude ofthe country; he left the horse-fair for the city, and sought in thebudging-kens of Edinburgh the secrecy impossible on the hill-side. Aclumsy experiment in shop-lifting doubled his danger, and more than oncehe saw the inside of the police-office. Henceforth, he was free of thefamily; he loafed in the Shirra-Brae; he knew the flash houses of Leithand the Grassmarket. With Jean Johnston, the blowen of his choice, he smeared his hands with the squalor of petty theft, and the drunkenrecklessness wherewith he swaggered it abroad hastened his approachingdownfall. With a perpetual anxiety to avoid the nippers his artistry dwindled. Theleft hand, invincible on the Cheviots, seemed no better than a bunchof thumbs in the narrow ways of Edinburgh; and after innumerablemisadventures Haggart was safely lodged in Dumfries gaol. No sooner washe locked within his cell than his restless brain planned a generousescape. He would win liberty for his fellows as well as for himself, andafter a brief council a murderous plot was framed and executed. A stoneslung in a handkerchief sent Morrin, the gaoler, to sleep; the keysfound on him opened the massy doors; and Haggart was free with a rewardset upon his head. The shock of the enterprise restored his magnanimity. Never did he display a finer bravery than in this spirited race for hislife, and though three counties were aroused he doubled and ducked tosuch purpose that he outstripped John Richardson himself with all hisbloodhounds, and two days later marched into Carlisle disguised in thestolen rags of a potato-bogle. During the few months that remained to him of life he embarked upon averitable Odyssey: he scoured Scotland from the Border to St. Andrews, and finally contrived a journey oversea to Ireland, where he made thename of Daniel O'Brien a terror to well-doers. Insolent and careless, he lurched from prison to prison; now it was Armagh that held him, now Downpatrick, until at last he was thrust on a general charge ofvagabondage and ill-company into Kilmainham, which has since harbouredmany a less valiant adventurer than David Haggart. Here the culminatingdisgrace overtook him: he was detected in the prison yard by his ancientenemy, John Richardson, of Dumfries, who dragged him back to Scotlandheavily shackled and charged with murder. So nimble had he provedhimself in extrication, that his captors secured him with pitilessseverity; round his waist he carried an iron belt, whereto werepadlocked the chains, clanking at his wrists and ankles. Thus torturedand helpless, he was fed 'like a sucking turkey in Bedlam'; buthis sorrows vanished, and his dying courage revived at sight of thetorchlight procession, which set forth from Dumfries to greet hisreturn. His coach was hustled by a mob, thousands strong, eager to catch sightof Haggart the Murderer, and though the spot where he slew Morrin waslike fire beneath his passing feet, he carried to his cell a heart and abrain aflame with gratified vanity. His guilt being patent, reprieve wasas hopeless as acquittal, and after the assured condemnation he spenthis last few days with what profit he might in religious and literaryexercises. He composed a memoir, which is a model of its kind; sodiligently did he make his soul, that he could appear on the scaffoldin a chastened spirit of prayerful gratitude; and, being an eminentscoundrel, he seemed a proper subject for the ministrations of Mr. George Combe. 'That is the one thing I did not know before, ' heconfessed with an engaging modesty, when his bumps were squeezed, and yet he was more than a match for the amiable phrenologist, whoseignorance of mankind persuaded him to believe that an illiterate feloncould know himself and analyse his character. His character escaped his critics as it escaped himself. Time waswhen George Borrow, that other picaroon, surprised the youthful David, thinking of Willie Wallace upon the Castle Rock, and Lavengro's romanticmemory transformed the raw-boned pickpocket into a monumental hero, wholacked nothing save a vast theatre to produce a vast effect. He was aTamerlane, robbed of his opportunity; a valiant warrior, who looked invain for a battlefield; a marauder who climbed the scaffold not for themagnitude, but for the littleness of his sins. Thus Borrow, in completemisunderstanding of the rascal's qualities. Now, Haggart's ambition was as circumscribed as his ability. He died, ashe was born, an expert cly-faker, whose achievements in sleight of handare as yet unparalleled. Had the world been one vast breast pocket hisfish-hook fingers would have turned it inside out. But it was not histo mount a throne, or overthrow a dynasty. 'My forks, ' he boasted, 'areequally long, and they never fail me. ' That is at once the reasonand the justification of his triumph. Born with a consummate artistrytingling at his finger-tips, how should he escape the compulsion of aglorious destiny? Without fumbling or failure he discovered the singlecraft for which fortune had framed him, and he pursued it with a courageand an industry which gave him not a kingdom, but fame and booty, exceeding even his greedy aspiration. No Tamerlane he, questing for acontinent, but David Haggart, the man with the long forks, happy if hesnatched his neighbour's purse. Before all things he respected the profession which his left hand madeinevitable, and which he pursued with unconquerable pride. Nor in hisinspired youth was plunder his sole ambition: he cultivated the gardenof his style with the natural zeal of the artist; he frowned upon thebungler with a lofty contempt. His materials were simplicity itself:his forks, which were always with him, and another's well-filled pocket, since, sensible of danger, he cared not to risk his neck for a pursethat did not contain so much as would 'sweeten a grawler. ' At itsbest, his method was always witty--that is the single word which willcharacterise it--witty as a piece of Heine's prose, and as dangerous. Hewould run over a man's pockets while he spoke with him, returning whathe chose to discard without the lightest breath of suspicion. 'A goodworkman, ' his contemporaries called him; and they thought it a shamefor him to be idle. Moreover, he did not blunder unconsciously upon histriumph; he tackled the trade in so fine a spirit of analysis that hemight have been the very Aristotle of his science. 'The keek-cloy, ' hewrote, in his hints to young sportsmen, 'is easily picked. If the notesare in the long fold just tip them the forks; but if there is a purseor open money in the case, you must link it. ' The breast-pocket, on theother hand, is a severer test. 'Picking the suck is sometimes a kittlejob, ' again the philosopher speaks. 'If the coat is buttoned it must beopened by slipping past. Then bring the lil down between the flap of thecoat and the body, keeping your spare arm across your man's breast, andso slip it to a comrade; then abuse the fellow for jostling you. ' Not only did he master the tradition of thievery; he vaunted hisoriginality with the familiar complacence of the scoundrel. Forgettingthat it was by burglary that he was undone, he explains for his publicglorification that he was wont to enter the houses of Leith by forcingthe small window above the outer door. This artifice, his vanitygrumbles, is now common; but he would have all the world understandthat it was his own invention, and he murmurs with the pedantry of theconvicted criminal that it is now set forth for the better protectionof honest citizens. No less admirable in his own eyes was that otherartifice which induced him to conceal such notes as he managed to filchin the collar of his coat. Thus he eluded the vigilance of the police, which searched its prey in those days with a sorry lack of cunning. In truth, Haggart's wits were as nimble as his fingers, and he seldomfailed to render a profitable account of his talents. He beguiled oneof his sojourns in gaol by manufacturing tinder wherewith to lightthe prisoners' pipes, and it is not astonishing that he won a generalpopularity. In Ireland, when the constables would take him for a Scot, he answered in high Tipperary, and saved his skin for a while by abrogue which would not have shamed a modern patriot. But quick as werehis wits, his vanity always outstripped them, and no hero ever braggedof his achievements with a louder effrontery. Now all you ramblers in mourning go, For the prince of ramblers is lying low, And all you maidens that love the game, Put on your mourning veils again. Thus he celebrated his downfall in a ballad that has the true Newgatering, and verily in his own eyes he was a hero who carried to thescaffold a dauntless spirit unstained by treachery. He believed himself an adept in all the arts; as a squire of dames heheld himself peerless, and he assured the ineffable Combe, who recordedhis flippant utterance with a credulous respect, that he had sacrificedhecatombs of innocent virgins to his importunate lust. Prose and versetrickled with equal facility from his pen, and his biography is amasterpiece. Written in the pedlar's French as it was misspoken inthe hells of Edinburgh, it is a narrative of uncommon simplicity anddirectness, marred now and again by such superfluous reflections as arethe natural result of thievish sentimentality. He tells his tale withoutparaphrase or adornment, and the worthy Writer to the Signet, whoprepared the work for the Press, would have asked three times the spaceto record one-half the adventures. 'I sunk upon it with my forksand brought it with me'; 'We obtained thirty-three pounds by thisaffair'--is there not the stalwart flavour of the epic in these plain, unvarnished sentences? His other accomplishments are pallid in the light of his brilliant lefthand. Once, at Derry--he attended a cock-fight, and beguiled an intervalby emptying the pockets of a lucky bookmaker. An expert, who watchedthe exploit in admiration, could not withhold a compliment. 'You are theSwitcher, ' he exclaimed; 'some take all, but you leave nothing. ' And itis as the Switcher that Haggart keeps his memory green. II--GENTLEMAN HARRY 'DAMN ye both! stop, or I will blow your brains out!' Thus it was thatHarry Simms greeted his victims, proving in a phrase that the heroicage of the rumpad was no more. Forgotten the debonair courtesy ofClaude Duval! Forgotten the lightning wit, the swift repartee of theincomparable Hind! No longer was the hightoby-gloak a 'gentleman' ofthe road; he was a butcher, if not a beggar, on horseback; a braggartwithout the courage to pull a trigger; a swashbuckler, oblivious of thatancient style which converted the misery of surrender into a privilege. Yet Harry Simms, the supreme adventurer of his age, was not withoutdistinction; his lithe form and his hard-ridden horse were the commondread of England; his activity was rewarded with a princely treasure;and if his method were lacking in urbanity, the excuse is that he dancednot to the brilliant measure of the Cavaliers, but limped to the clumsyfiddle-scraping of the early Georges. At Eton, where a too-indulgent grandmother had placed him, he ransackedthe desks of his school-fellows, and avenged a birching by emptying hismaster's pockets. Wherefore he lost the hope of a polite education, andinstead of proceeding with a clerkly dignity to King's College, inthe University of Cambridge, he was ignominiously apprenticed to abreeches-maker. The one restraint was as irksome as the other, and HarrySimms abandoned the needle, as he had scorned the grammar, to go uponthe pad. Though his early companions were scragged at Tyburn, thelight-fingered rascal was indifferent to their fate, and squanderingsuch booty as fell to his share, he bravely 'turned out' for more. Tottenham Court Fair was the theatre of his childish exploits, and therehe gained some little skill in the picking of pockets. But a spell ofbad trade brought him to poverty, and he attempted to replenish an emptypocket by the childish expedient of a threatening letter. The plan was conceived and executed with a futility which ensured aninstant capture. The bungler chose a stranger at haphazard, commandinghim, under penalty of death, to lay five guineas upon a gun in TowerWharf; the guineas were cunningly deposited, and the rascal, caughtwith his hand upon the booty, was committed to Newgate. Youth, and theintercession of his grandmother, procured a release, unjustified by theinfamous stupidity of the trick. Its very clumsiness should have senthim over sea; and it is wonderful that from a beginning of so littlepromise, he should have climbed even the first slopes of greatness. However, the memory of gaol forced him to a brief interlude of honesty;for a while he wore the pink coat of Colonel Cunningham's postillion, and presently was promoted to the independence of a hackney coach. Thus employed, he became acquainted with the famous Cyprians of CoventGarden, who, loving him for his handsome face and sprightly gesture, seduced him to desert his cab for an easier profession. So long as thesky was fair, he lived under their amiable protection; but the summerhaving chased the smarter gentry from town, the ladies could afford himno more than would purchase a horse and a pair of pistols, so that Harrywas compelled to challenge fortune on the high road. His first journeywas triumphantly successful. A post-chaise and a couple of coachesemptied their wealth into his hands, and, riding for London, he was ableto return the favours lavished upon him by Covent Garden. At the firsttouch of gold he was transformed to a finished blade. He purchasedhimself a silver-hilted sword, which he dangled over a discreet suitof black velvet; a prodigious run of luck at the gaming-tables kept hispurse well lined; and he made so brilliant an appearance in his familiarhaunts that he speedily gained the name of 'Gentleman Harry. ' But themoney, lightly won, was lightly spent. The tables took back morethan they gave, and before long Simms was astride his horse again, flourishing his irons, and crying: 'Stand and deliver'! upon every roadin England. Epping Forest was his general hunting-ground, but his enterprise tookhim far afield, and if one night he galloped by starlight acrossBagshot Heath, another he was holding up the York stage with unbridledinsolence. He robbed, he roared, he blustered with praiseworthyindustry; and good luck coming to the aid of caution, he escaped fora while the necessary punishment of his crimes. It was on StockbridgeDowns that he met his first check. He had stopped a chariot, and came off with a hatful of gold, but thevictims, impatient of disaster, raised the county, and Gentleman Harrywas laid by the heels. Never at a loss, he condescended to a cringinghypocrisy: he whined, he whimpered, he babbled of reform, he plied hisprosecutors with letters so packed with penitence, that they abandonedtheir case, and in a couple of days Simms had eased a collector atEversey Bank of three hundred pounds. For this enterprise two othersclimbed the gallows, and the robber's pride in his capture was miserablylessened by the shedding of innocent blood. But he forgot his remorse as speedily as he dissipated his money, andsentimentality neither damped his enjoyment nor restrained his energy. Even his brief visits to London were turned to the best account; and, though he would have the world believe him a mere voluptuary, his eyewas bent sternly upon business. If he did lose his money in a gamblinghell, he knew who won it, and spoke with his opponent on the homewardway. In his eyes a fuddled rake was always fair game, and the sternwindows of St. Clement's Church looked down upon many a profitableadventure. His most distinguished journey was to Ireland, whither he setforth to find a market for his stolen treasure. But he determined thatthe road should bear its own charges, and he reached Dublin a richer manthan he left London. In three months he was penniless, but he did notbegin trade again until he had recrossed the Channel, and, having got towork near Chester, he returned to the Piazza fat with bank-notes. With success his extravagance increased, and, living the life of a manabout town, he was soon harassed by debt. More than once he was lodgedin the Marshalsea, and as his violent temper resented the interferenceof a dun, he became notorious for his assaults upon sheriff's officers. And thus his poor skill grew poorer: forgetting his trade, he expectedthat brandy would ease his embarrassment. At last, sodden with drink, he enlisted in the Guards, from which regiment he deserted, only to bepressed aboard a man-of-war. Freed by a clever trick, he took to theroad again, until a paltry theft from a barber transported him toMaryland. There he turned sailor, and his ship, The Two Sisters, beingtaken by a privateer, he contrived to scramble into Portugal, whence hemade his way back to England, and to the only adventure of which he wasmaster. He landed with no more money than the price of a pistol, buthe prigged a prancer at Bristol horsefair, and set out upon his lastjourney. The tide of his fortune was at flood. He crammed his pocketswith watches; he was owner of enough diamonds to set up shop in afashionable quarter; of guineas he had as many as would support hismagnificence for half a year; and at last he resolved to quit the road, and to live like the gentleman he was. To this prudence he was the moreeasily persuaded, because not only were the thief-takers eager forhis capture, but he was a double-dyed deserter, whose sole chance ofquietude was a decent obscurity. His resolution was taken at St. Albans, and over a comfortable dinnerhe pictured a serene and uneventful future. On the morrow he would setforth to Dublin, sell his handsome stock of jewels, and forget that thecart ever lumbered up Tyburn Hill. So elated was he with his growingvirtue, that he called for a second bottle, and as the port heatedhis blood his fingers tingled for action. A third bottle proved beyonddispute that only the craven were idle; 'and why, ' he exclaimed, generous with wine, 'should the most industrious ruffler of Englandcondescend to inaction?' Instantly he summoned the ostler, screamingfor his horse, and before Redburn he had emptied four pockets, andhad exchanged his own tired jade for a fresh and willing beast. Stillexultant in his contempt of cowardice, he faced the Warrington stage, and made off with his plunder at a drunken gallop. Arrived at Dunstable, he was so befogged with liquor and pride, that he entered the 'BullInn, ' the goal of the very coach he had just encountered. He had scarcecalled for a quartern of brandy when the robbed passengers thronged intothe kitchen; and the fright gave him enough sobriety to leave his glassuntasted, and stagger to his horse. In a wild fury of arrogance andterror, of conflicting vice and virtue, he pressed on to Hockcliffe, where he took refuge from the rain, and presently, fuddled with morebrandy, he fell asleep over the kitchen fire. By this time the hue and cry was raised; and as the hero lay helpless inthe corner three troopers burst into the inn, levelled their pistols athis head, and threatened death if he put his hand to his pocket. Halfasleep, and wholly drunk, he made not he smallest show of resistance; hesurrendered all his money, watches, and diamonds, save a little thatwas sewn into his neckcloth, and sulkily crawled up to his bed-chamber. Thither the troopers followed him, and having restored some nine poundsat his urgent demand, they watched his heavy slumbers. For all hisbrandy Simms slept but uneasily, and awoke in the night sick with theremorse which is bred of ruined plans and a splitting head. He got upwearily, and sat over the fire 'a good deal chagrined, ' to quote his ownsimple phrase, at his miserable capture. Escape seemed hopeless indeed;there crouched the vigilant troopers, scowling on their prey. A thousandplans chased each other through the hero's fuddled brain, and at lasthe resolved to tempt the cupidity of his guardians, and to make himselfmaster of their fire-arms. There were still left him a couple of seals, one gold, the other silver, and watching his opportunity, Simms flungthem with a flourish in the fire. It fell out as he expected; the hungrytroopers made a dash to save the trinkets; the prisoner seized a braceof pistols and leapt to the door. But, alas, the pistols missed fire, Harry was immediately overpowered, and on the morrow was carried, sickand sorry, before the Justice. From Dunstable he travelled his lastjourney to Newgate, and, being condemned at the Old Bailey, he washanged till he was dead, and his body thereafter was carried fordissection to a surgeon's in that same Covent Garden where he firstdeserted his hackney cab for the pleasures of the town. 'Gentleman Harry' was neither a brilliant thief nor a courteoushighwayman. There was no touch of the grand manner even in his prettiestachievement. His predecessors had made a pistol and a vizard anoverwhelming terror, and he did but profit by their tradition whenhe bade the cowed traveller stand and deliver. His profession, as hepractised it, neither demanded skill nor incurred danger. Though hethreatened death at every encounter, you never hear that he pulled atrigger throughout his career. If his opponent jeered and rode off, herode off with a whole skin and a full pocket. Once even this renownedadventurer accepted the cut of a riding-whip across his face, nor madeany attempt to avenge the insult. But his manifold shortcomings were nohindrance to his success. Wherever he went, between London and York, he stopped coaches and levied his tax. A threatening voice, an archedeyebrow, an arrogant method of fingering an unloaded pistol, conspiredwith the craven, indolent habit of the time to make his every journeya procession of triumph. He was capable of performing all such featsas the age required of him. But you miss the spirit, the bravery, theurbanity, and the wit, which made the adventurer of the seventeenthcentury a figure of romance. One point only of the great tradition did Harry Simms remember. He wasnever unwilling to restore a trinket made precious by sentiment. Oncewhen he took a gold ring from a gentleman's finger a gentlewoman burstinto tears, exclaiming, 'There goes your father's ring. ' Whereupon Simmsthrew all his booty into a hat, saying, 'For God's sake, take that oranything else you please. ' In all other respects he was a bully, withthe hesitancy of a coward, rather than the proper rival of Hind orDuval. Apart from the exercise of his trade, he was a very Mohock forbrutality. He would ill-treat his victims, whenever their drunkennesspermitted the freedom, and he had no better gifts for the women who werekind to him than cruelty and neglect. One of his many imprisonments wasthe result of a monstrous ferocity. 'Unluckily in a quarrel, ' he tellsyou gravely, 'I ran a crab-stick into a woman's eye'; and well did hedeserve his sojourn in the New Prison. At another time he rewarded thekeeper of a coffee-house, who supported him for six months, by stealingher watch; and, when she grumbled at his insolence, he reflected, with achuckle, that she could more easily bear the loss of her watch than theloss of her lover. Even in his gaiety there was an unpleasant spiceof greed and truculence. Once, when he was still seen in fashionablecompany, he went to a masquerade, dressed in a rich Spanish habit, lent him by a Captain in the Guards, and he made so fine a show thathe captivated a young and beautiful Cyprian, whom, when she would havetreated him with generosity, he did but reward with the loss of all herjewels. Moreover, he had so small a regard for his craft, that he would spoilhis effects by drink or debauchery; and, though a highwayman, he caredso little for style, that he would as lief trick a drunken gamester asface his man on Bagshot Heath or beneath the shade of Epping Forest. You admire not his success, because, like the success of the popularpolitician, it depended rather upon his dupes than upon his merit. Youapprove not his raffish exploits in the hells of Covent Garden or DruryLane. But you cannot withhold respect from his consistent dandyism, andyou are grateful for the record that, engaged in a mean enterprise, hewas dressed 'in a green velvet frock and a short lac'd waistcoat. ' Aboveall, his picturesque capture at Hockcliffe atones for much stupidity. The resolution, wavering at the wine glass, the last drunken ride fromSt. Albans--these are inventions in experience, which should make Simmsimmortal. And when he sits 'by the fireside a good deal chagrined, 'he recalls the arrest of a far greater man--even of Cartouche, whowas surprised by the soldiers at his bedside stitching a torn pair ofbreeches. His autobiography, wherein 'he relates the truth as a dyingman, ' seemed excellent in the eyes of Borrow, who loved it so well thathe imagined a sentence, ascribed it falsely to Simms, and then rewardedit with extravagant applause. But Gentleman Harry knew how to tell a simple story, and the book, 'allwrote by myself while under sentence of death, ' is his best performance. In action he had many faults, for, if he was a highwayman among rakes, he was but a rake among highwaymen. A PARALLEL (THE SWITCHER AND GENTLEMAN HARRY) HAGGART and Simms are united in the praise of Borrow, and in thegenerous applause of posterity. Each resumes for his own generation theprowess of his kind. Each has assured his immortality by an experimentin literature; and if epic simplicity and rapid narrative are thevirtues of biography, it is difficult to award the prize. The Switcherpreferred to write in the rough lingo, wherein he best expressedhimself. He packs his pages with ill-spelt slang, telling his story ofthievery in the true language of thieves. Gentleman Harry, as became aperson of quality, mimicked the dialect wherewith he was familiar in themore fashionable gambling-dens of Covent Garden. Both write with out thesmallest suggestion of false shame or idle regret, and a natural vanitylifts each of them out of the pit of commonplace on to the tableland ofthe heroic. They set forth their depredation, as a victorious generalmight record his triumphs, and they excel the nimblest Ordinary thatever penned a dying speech in all the gifts of the historian. But when you leave the study for the field, the Switcher instantlydeclares his superiority. He had the happiness to practise his craftin its heyday, while Simms knew but the fag-end of a noble tradition. Haggart, moreover, was an expert, pursuing a difficult art, while Simmswas a bully, plundering his betters by bluff. Simms boasted no qualitywhich might be set off against the accurate delicacy of Haggart's hand. The Englishman grew rich upon a rolling eye and a rusty pistol. He puton his 'fiercest manner, ' and believed that the world would deny himnothing. The Scot, rejoicing in his exquisite skill, went to workwithout fuss or bluster, and added the joy of artistic pride to hisdelight in plunder. Though Simm's manner seems the more chivalrous, itrequired not one tithe of the courage which was Haggart's necessity. Onhorseback, with the semblance of a fire-arm, a man may easily challengea coachful of women. It needs a cool brain and a sound courage toempty a pocket in the watchful presence of spies and policemen. WhileGentleman Harry chose a lonely road, or the cover of night for hisexploits, the Switcher always worked by day, hustled by a crowd ofwitnesses. Their hours of leisure furnish a yet more striking contrast. Simms was apolished dandy delighting in his clothes, unhappy if he were deprivedof his bottle and his game. Haggart, on the other hand, was beforeall things sealed to his profession. He would have deserted the gayestmasquerade, had he ever strayed into so light a frivolity, for thechance of lightening a pocket. He tasted but few amusements without thelimits of his craft, and he preserved unto the end a touch of that dourcharacter which is the heritage of his race. But, withal, he was anamiable decent body, who would have recoiled in horror from the drunkenbrutality of Gentleman Harry. Though he bragged to George Combe of hispitiless undoing of wenches, he never thrust a crab-stick into awoman's eye, and he was incapable of rewarding a kindness by robbery andneglect. Once--at Newcastle--he arrayed himself in a smart white coatand tops, but the splendour ill became his red-headed awkwardness, andhe would have stood aghast at the satin frocks and velvet waistcoats ofhim who broke the hearts of Drury Lane. But if he were gentler in hislife, Haggart was prepared to fight with a more reckless courage whenhis trade demanded it. It was the Gentleman's boast that he nevershed the blood of man. When David found a turnkey between himself andfreedom, he did not hesitate to kill, though his remorse was bitterenough when he neared the gallows. In brief, Haggart was not only thebetter craftsman, but the honester fellow, and though his hands were redwith blood, he deserved his death far less than did the more truculent, less valiant Simms. Each had in his brain the stuff whereof men ofletters are made: this is their parallel. And, by way of contrast, while the Switcher was an accomplished artist, Gentleman Harry was aroystering braggart. DEACON BRODIE AND CHARLES PEACE I--DEACON BRODIE AS William Brodie stood at the bar, on trial for a his life, he seemedthe gallantest gentleman in court. Thither he had been carried ina chair, and, still conscious of the honour paid him, he flashed acondescending smile upon his judges. His step was jaunty as ever; hissuperb attire well became the Deacon of a Guild. His coat was blue, his vest a very garden of flowers; while his satin breeches and hisstockings of white silk were splendid in their simplicity. Beneatha cocked hat his hair was fully dressed and powdered, and even theprosecuting counsel assailed him with the respect due to a man offashion. The fellow's magnificence was thrown into relief by the squalorof his accomplice. For George Smith had neither the money nor the tasteto disguise himself as a polished rogue, and he huddled as far from hismaster as he could in the rags of his mean estate. Nor from this momentdid Brodie ever abate one jot of his dignity. He faced his accusers witha clear eye and a frigid amiability; he listened to his sentence witha calm contempt; he laughed complacently at the sorry interludes ofjudicial wit; and he faced the last music with a bravery and a cynicismwhich bore the stamp of true greatness. It was not until after his crime that Brodie's heroism approved itself. And even then his was a triumph not of skill but of character. Always agentleman in manner and conduct, he owed the success and the failureof his life to this one quality. When in flight he made for Flushingon board the Endeavour, the other passengers, who knew not his name, straightway christened him 'the gentleman. ' The enterprise itself wouldhave been impossible to one less persuasively gifted, and its properexecution is a tribute to the lofty quality of his mind. There was hein London, a stranger and a fugitive; yet instead of crawling furtivelyinto a coal-barge he charters a ship, captures the confidence of thecaptain, carries the other passengers to Flushing, when they were boundfor Leith, and compels every one to confess his charm! The thief, also, found him irresistible; and while the game lasted, the flash kens ofEdinburgh murmured the Deacon's name in the hushed whisper of respect. His fine temperament disarmed treachery. In London he visited an ancientdoxy of his own, who, with her bully, shielded him from justice, thoughbetrayal would have met with an ample reward. Smith, if he knew himselfthe superior craftsman, trembled at the Deacon's nod, who thus swaggeredit through life, with none to withhold the exacted reverence. To thissame personal compulsion he owed his worldly advancement. Deacon of theWrights' Guild while still a young man, he served upon the Council, wasknown for one of Edinburgh's honoured citizens, and never went abroadunmarked by the finger of respectful envy. He was elected in 1773 amember of the Cape Club, and met at the Isle of Man Arms in Craig'sClose the wittiest men of his time and town. Raeburn, Runciman, andFerguson the poet were of the society, and it was with such as thesethat Brodie might have wasted his vacant hour. Indeed, at the verymoment that he was cracking cribs and shaking the ivories, he was achosen leader of fashion and gaiety; and it was the elegance of the'gentleman' that distinguished him from his fellows. The fop, indeed, had climbed the altitudes of life; the cracksman stillstumbled in the valleys. If he had a ready cunning in the planning of anenterprise, he must needs bungle at the execution; and had he not beenassociated with George Smith, a king of scoundrels, there would be fewexploits to record. And yet for the craft of housebreaker he had onesolid advantage: he knew the locks and bolts of Edinburgh as he knewhis primer--for had he not fashioned the most of them himself? But, his knowledge once imparted to his accomplices, he cheerfully sank to amenial's office. In no job did he play a principal's part: he was merelytold off by Smith or another to guard the entrance and sound the alarm. When M'Kain's on the Bridge was broken, the Deacon found the false keys;it was Smith who carried off such poor booty as was found. And thoughthe master suggested the attack upon Bruce's shop, knowing full wellthe simplicity of the lock, he lingered at the Vintner's over a game ofhazard, and let the man pouch a sumptuous booty. Even the onslaught upon the Excise Office, which cost his life, wascontrived with appalling clumsiness. The Deacon of the Wrights' Guild, who could slash wood at his will, who knew the artifice of every lockin the city, let his men go to work with no better implements than thestolen coulter of a plough and a pair of spurs. And when they tackledthe ill omened job, Brodie was of those who brought failure upon it. Long had they watched the door of the Excise; long had they studied thehabits of its clerks; so that they went to work in no vain spirit ofexperiment. Nor on the fatal night did they force an entrance until theyhad dogged the porter to his home. Smith and Brown ransacked the placefor money, while Brodie and Andrew Ainslie remained without to give anecessary warning. Whereupon Ainslie was seized with fright, and Brodie, losing his head, called off the others, so that six hundred poundswere left, that might have been an easy prey. Smith, indignant at thecollapse of the long-pondered design, laid the blame upon his master, and they swung, as Brodie's grim spirit of farce suggested, for fourpounds apiece. The humours of the situation were all the Deacon's own. He dressed thepart in black; his respectability grinned behind a vizard; and all thewhile he trifled nonchalantly with a pistol. Breaking the silence withsnatches from The Beggar's Opera, he promised that all their lead shouldturn to gold, christened the coulter and the crow the Great and LittleSamuel, and then went off to drink and dice at the Vintner's. How couldanger prevail against this undying gaiety? And if Smith were peevish atfailure, he was presently reconciled, and prepared once more to die forhis Deacon. Even after escape, the amateur is still apparent. True, he managed thetrip to Flushing with his ancient extravagance; true, he employed allthe juggleries of the law to prevent his surrender at Amsterdam. Buthe knew not the caution of the born criminal, and he was run to earth, because he would still write to his friends like a gentleman. Hisletters, during this nightmare of disaster, are perfect in theircarelessness and good-fellowship. In this he demands news of hischildren, as becomes a father and a citizen, and furnishes a schedule oftheir education; in that he is curious concerning the issue of a main, and would know whether his black cock came off triumphant. Nor, even inflight, did he forget his proper craft, but would have his tools sent toCharleston, that in America he might resume the trade that had made himDeacon. But his was the art of conduct, not of guile, and he deserved capturefor his rare indifference. Why, then, with no natural impulsion, did herisk the gallows? Why, being no born thief, and innocent of the thief'scunning, did he associate with so clever a scoundrel as George Smith, with cowards craven as Brown and Ainslie? The greed of gold, doubtless, half persuaded him, but gold was otherwise attainable, and the motivewas assuredly far more subtle. Brodie, in fact, was of a romanticturn. He was, so to say, a glorified schoolboy, surfeited with pennydreadfuls. He loved above all things to patter the flash, to dreamhimself another Macheath, to trick himself out with all the trappingsof a crime he was unfit to commit. It was never the job itself thatattracted him: he would always rather throw the dice than force aneighbour's window. But he must needs have a distraction from therespectability of his life. Everybody was at his feet; he was Deaconof his Guild, at an age whereat his fellows were striving to earn areputable living; his masterpieces were fashioned, and the wrights'trade was already a burden. To go upon the cross seemed a dream offreedom, until he snapped his fingers at the world, filled his mouthwith slang, prepared his alibi, and furnished him a whole wardrobe ofdisguises. With a conscious irony, maybe, he buried his pistols beneath thedomestic hearth, jammed his dark lantern into the press, where he kepthis game-cocks, and determined to make an inextricable jumble of hiscareer. Drink is sometimes a sufficient reaction against the orderlinessof a successful life. But drink and cards failed with the Deacon, and at the Vintner's of hisfrequentation he encountered accomplices proper for his schemes. Neverwas so outrageous a protest offered against domesticity. Yet Brodie'sresolution was romantic after its fashion, and was far more respectablethan the blackguardism of the French Revolution, which distractedhousewifely discontent a year after the Deacon swung. Moreover, it gaveoccasion for his dandyism and his love of display. If in one incarnationhe was the complete gentleman, in another he dressed the part of theperfect scoundrel, and the list of his costumes would have filled one ofhis own ledgers. But, when once the possibility of housebreaking was taken from him, hereturned to his familiar dignity. Being questioned by the ProcuratorFiscal, he shrugged his shoulders, regretting that other affairsdemanded his attention. As who should say: it is unpardonable to disturbthe meditations of a gentleman. He made a will bequeathing his knowledgeof law to the magistrates of Edinburgh, his dexterity in cards and diceto Hamilton the chimney-sweeper, and all his bad qualities to his goodfriends and old companions, Brown and Ainslie, not doubting, however, that their own will secure them 'a rope at last. ' In prison it was hisworst complaint that, though the nails of his toes and fingers were notquite so long as Nebuchadnezzar's, they were long enough for amandarin, and much longer than he found convenient. Thus he preserved anuntroubled demeanour until the day of his death. Always polite, andeven joyous, he met the smallest indulgence with enthusiasm. When Smithcomplained that a respite of six weeks was of small account, Brodieexclaimed, 'George, what would you and I give for six weeks longer? Sixweeks would be an age to us. ' The day of execution was the day of his supreme triumph. As some menare artists in their lives, so the Deacon was an artist in his death. Nothing became him so well as his manner of leaving the world. There isnever a blot upon this exquisite performance. It is superb, impeccable!Again his dandyism supported him, and he played the part of a dying manin a full suit of black, his hair, as always, dressed and powdered. The day before he had been jovial and sparkling. He had chanted all hisflash songs, and cracked the jokes of a man of fashion. But he set outfor the gallows with a firm step and a rigorous demeanour. He offereda prayer of his own composing, and 'O Lord, ' he said, 'I lament thatI know so little of Thee. ' The patronage and the confession are alikecharacteristic. As he drew near the scaffold, the model of which he hadgiven to his native city a few years since, he stepped with an agilebriskness; he examined the halter, destined for his neck, with animpartial curiosity. His last pleasantry was uttered as he ascended the table. 'George, ' hemuttered, 'you are first in hand, ' and thereafter he took farewellof his friends. Only one word of petulance escaped his lips: when thehalters were found too short, his contempt for slovenly workmanshipurged him to protest, and to demand a punishment for the executioner. Again ascending the table, he assured himself against further mishapby arranging the rope with his own hands. Thus he was turned off ina brilliant assembly. The Provost and Magistrates, in respect for hisdandyism, were resplendent in their robes of office, and though thecrowd of spectators rivalled that which paid a tardy honour to JonathanWild, no one was hurt save the customary policeman. Such was thedignified end of a 'double life. ' And the duplicity is the stranger, because the real Deacon was not Brodie the Cracksman, but Brodie theGentleman. So lightly did he esteem life that he tossed it from him ina careless impulse. So little did he fear death that, 'What is hanging?'he asked. 'A leap in the dark. ' II--CHARLES PEACE CHARLES PEACE, after the habit of his kind, was born of scrupulouslyhonest parents. The son of a religious file-maker, he owed to his fathernot only his singular piety but his love of edged tools. As he neverencountered an iron bar whose scission baffled him, so there never wasa fire-eating Methodist to whose ministrations he would not turn arepentant ear. After a handy portico and a rich booty he loved nothingso well as a soul-stirring discourse. Not even his precious fiddleoccupied a larger space in his heart than that devotion which theignorant have termed hypocrisy. Wherefore his career was no lesssuitable to his ambition than his inglorious end. For he lived the kingof housebreakers, and he died a warning to all evildoers, with a prayerof intercession trembling upon his lips. The hero's boyhood is wrapped in obscurity. It is certain that noglittering precocity brought disappointment to his maturer years, and hewas already nineteen when he achieved his first imprisonment. Even then'twas a sorry offence, which merited no more than a month, so that hereturned to freedom and his fiddle with his character unbesmirched. Serious as ever in pious exercises, he gained a scanty living asstrolling musician. There was never a tavern in Sheffield where thetwang of his violin was unheard, and the skill wherewith he extortedmusic from a single string earned him the style and title of the modernPaganini. But such an employ was too mean for his pride, and he soongot to work again--this time with a better success. The mansionsof Sheffield were his early prey, and a rich plunder rewarded hisintrepidity. The design was as masterly as its accomplishment. The grandstyle is already discernible. The houses were broken in quietude andgood order. None saw the opened window; none heard the step upon thestair; in truth, the victim's loss was his first intelligence. But when the booty was in the robber's own safe keeping, the empiricismof his method was revealed. As yet he knew no secret and efficient fenceto shield him from detection; as yet he had not learnt that the completeburglar works alone. This time he knew two accomplices--women both, andone his own sister! A paltry pair of boots was the clue of discovery, and a goodly stretch was the proper reward of a clumsy indiscretion. Sofor twenty years he wavered between the crowbar and the prison house, now perfecting a brilliant scheme, now captured through recklessness ordrink. Once when a mistake at Manchester sent him to the Hulks, he ownedhis failure was the fruit of brandy, and after his wont delivered (fromthe dock) a little homily upon the benefit of sobriety. Meanwhile his art was growing to perfection. He had at last discoveredthat a burglary demands as diligent a forethought as a campaign; he hadlearnt that no great work is achieved by a multitude of minds. Beforehis boat carried off a goodly parcel of silk from Nottingham, he wasknown to the neighbourhood as an enthusiastic and skilful angler. Oneday he dangled his line, the next he sat peacefully at the same employ;and none suspected that the mild mannered fisherman had under thecloud of night despatched a costly parcel to London. Even the years ofimprisonment were not ill-spent. Peace was still preparing the greatachievement of his life, and he framed from solitary reflection as wellas from his colleagues in crime many an ingenious theory afterwardsfearlessly translated into practice. And when at last he escaped theslavery of the gaol, picture-framing was the pursuit which coveredthe sterner business of his life. His depredation involved him in nosuspicion; his changing features rendered recognition impossible. Whenthe exercise of his trade compelled him to shoot a policeman at WhalleyRange, another was sentenced for the crime; and had he not encounteredMrs. Dyson, who knows but he might have practised his art in prosperousobscurity until claimed by a coward's death? But a stormy love-passagewith Mrs. Dyson led to the unworthy killing of the woman's husband--acrime unnecessary and in no sense consonant to the burglar's craft; andCharles Peace was an outlaw, with a reward set upon his head. And now came a period of true splendour. Like Fielding, like Cervantes, like Sterne, Peace reserved his veritable masterpiece for the certaintyof middle-life. His last two years were nothing less than a march oftriumph. If you remember his constant danger, you will realise thegrandeur of the scheme. From the moment that Peace left Bannercross withDyson's blood upon his hands, he was a hunted man. His capture was worthfive hundred pounds; his features were familiar to a hundred hungrydetectives. Had he been less than a man of genius, he might have takenan unavailing refuge in flight or concealment. But, content with nosafety unattended by affluence, he devised a surer plan: he became ahouseholder. Now, a semi-detached villa is an impregnable stronghold. Respectability oozes from the dusky mortar of its bricks, and escapes inclouds of smoke from its soot-grimed chimneys. No policeman ever detectsa desperate ruffian in a demure black-coated gentleman who day after dayturns an iron gate upon its rusty hinge. And thus, wrapt in a cloakof suburban piety, Peace waged a pitiless and effective war upon hisneighbours. He pillaged Blackheath, Greenwich, Peckham, and many another home ofhonest worth, with a noiselessness and a precision that were the envy ofthe whole family. The unknown and intrepid burglar was a terror to allthe clerkdom of the City, and though he was as secret and secluded asPeace, the two heroes were never identified. At the time of his trueeminence he 'resided' in Evelina Road, Peckham, and none was moresensible than he how well the address became his provincial refinement. There he installed himself with his wife and Mrs. Thompson. Hisdrawing-room suite was the envy of the neighbourhood; his pony-trapproclaimed him a man of substance; his gentle manners won the respect ofall Peckham. Hither he would invite his friends to such entertainmentsas the suburb expected. His musical evenings were recorded in the localpaper, while on Sundays he chanted the songs of Zion with a zeal whichClapham herself might envy. The house in Evelina Road was no mere haunt of quiet gentility. Itwas chosen with admirable forethought and with a stern eye upon thenecessities of business. Beyond the garden wall frowned a railwayembankment, which enabled the cracksman to escape from his house withoutopening the front door. By the same embankment he might, if he chose, convey the trophies of the night's work; and what mattered it if thewindows rattled to the passing train? At least a cloud of suspicion was dispelled. Here he lived for twoyears, with naught to disturb his tranquillity save Mrs. Thompson'staste for drink. The hours of darkness were spent in laborious activity, the open day brought its own distractions. There was always Bow Streetwherein to loaf, and the study of the criminal law lost none of itsexcitement from the reward offered outside for the bald-headed fanaticwho sat placidly within. And the love of music was Peace's constantsolace. Whatever treasures he might discard in a hurried flight, henever left a fiddle behind, and so vast became his pilfered collectionthat he had to borrow an empty room in a friend's house for its betterdisposal. Moreover, he had a fervent pride in his craft; and you might deduce fromhis performance the whole theory and practice of burglary. He workedever without accomplices. He knew neither the professional thief nor hislingo; and no association with gaol-birds involved him in the risk oftreachery and betrayal. His single colleague was a friendly fence, andnot even at the gallows' foot would he surrender the fence's name. Hismaster quality was a constructive imagination. Accident never marred hisdesign. He would visit the house of his breaking until he understoodits ground-plan, and was familiar with its inhabitants. This demanded anamazing circumspection, but Peace was as stealthy as a cat, and he wouldkeep silent vigil for hours rather than fail from an over keen anxiety. Having marked the place of his entry, and having chosen an appropriatehour, he would prevent the egress of his enemies by screwing up thedoors. He then secured the room wherein he worked, and the job finished, heslung himself into the night by the window, so that, ere an alarm couldbe raised, his pony-trap had carried the booty to Evelina Road. Such was the outline of his plan; but, being no pedant, he varied itat will: nor was he likely to court defeat through lack of resource. Accomplished as he was in his proper business, he was equally alert tomeet the accompanying risks. He had brought the art of cozening strangedogs to perfection; and for the exigence of escape, his physicalequipment was complete. He would resist capture with unparalleleddetermination, and though he shuddered at the shedding of blood, henever hesitated when necessity bade him pull the trigger. Moreover, there was no space into which he would not squeeze his body, and theiron bars were not yet devised through which he could not make an exit. Once--it was at Nottingham--he was surprised by an inquisitive detectivewho demanded his name and trade. 'I am a hawker of spectacles, ' repliedPeace, 'and my licence is downstairs. Wait two minutes and I'll show ityou. ' The detective never saw him again. Six inches only separated thebars of the window, but Peace asked no more, and thus silently hewon his freedom. True, his most daring feat--the leap from thetrain--resulted not in liberty, but in a broken head. But he essayeda task too high even for his endeavour, and, despite his manacles, atleast he left his boot in the astonished warder's grip. No less remarkable than his skill and daring were his means of evasion. Even without a formal disguise he could elude pursuit. At an instant'swarning, his loose, plastic features would assume another shape; outshot his lower jaw, and, as if by magic, the blood flew into his faceuntil you might take him for a mulatto. Or, if he chose, he wouldstrap his arm to his side, and let the police be baffled by a woodenmechanism, decently finished with a hook. Thus he roamed London up anddown unsuspected, and even after his last failure at Blackheath, nonewould have discovered Charles Peace in John Ward, the Single-HandedBurglar, had not woman's treachery prompted detection. Indeed, he was anepitome of his craft, the Complete Burglar made manifest. Not only did he plan his victories with previous ingenuity, but hesacrificed to his success both taste and sentiment. His dress was alwaysof the most sombre; his only wear was the decent black of everydaygodliness. The least spice of dandyism might have distinguished himfrom his fellows, and Peace's whole vanity lay in his craft. Nor did thepaltry sentiment of friendship deter him from his just course. Whenthe panic aroused by the silent burglar was uncontrolled, a neighbourconsulted Peace concerning the safety of his house. The robber, having duly noted the villa's imperfections, and having discovered thehiding-place of jewellery and plate, complacently rifled it the nextnight. Though his self-esteem sustained a shock, though henceforth hisfriend thought meanly of his judgment, he was rewarded with the solidpudding of plunder, and the world whispered of the mysterious marauderwith a yet colder horror. In truth, the large simplicity and solitude ofhis style sets him among the Classics, and though others have surpassedhim at single points of the game, he practised the art with suchuniversal breadth and courage as were then a revolution, and are stillunsurpassed. But the burglar ever fights an unequal battle. One false step, anddefeat o'erwhelms him. For two years had John Ward intimidated themiddle-class seclusion of South London; for two years had he hidden froma curious world the ugly, furrowed visage of Charles Peace. The baldhead, the broad-rimmed spectacles, the squat, thick figure--he stoodbut five feet four in his stockings, and adds yet another to the listof little-great men--should have ensured detection, but the quick changeand the persuasive gesture were omnipotent, and until the autumn of 1878Peace was comfortably at large. And then an encounter at Blackheath puthim within the clutch of justice. His revolver failed in its duty, and, valiant as he was, at last he met his match. In prison he wasalternately insolent and aggrieved. He blustered for justice, proclaimedhimself the victim of sudden temptation, and insisted that his intentionhad been ever innocent. But, none the less, he was sentenced to a lifer, and, the mask of JohnWard being torn from him, he was sent to Sheffield to stand his trial asCharles Peace. The leap from the train is already recorded; and at hislast appearance in the dock he rolled upon the floor, a petulant andbroken man. When once the last doom was pronounced, he forgot bothfiddle and crowbar; he surrendered himself to those exercises of pietyfrom which he had never wavered. The foolish have denounced him for ahypocrite, not knowing that the artist may have a life apart from hisart, and that to Peace religion was an essential pursuit. So he died, having released from an unjust sentence the poor wretch who at WhalleyRange had suffered for his crime, and offering up a consolatory prayerfor all mankind. In truth, there was no enemy for whom he did notintercede. He prayed for his gaolers, for his executioner, for theOrdinary, for his wife, for Mrs. Thompson, his drunken doxy, and he wentto his death with the sure step of one who, having done his duty, isreconciled with the world. The mob testified its affectionate admirationby dubbing him 'Charley, ' and remembered with effusion his last grimpleasantry. 'What is the scaffold?' he asked with sublime earnestness. And the answer came quick and sanctimonious: 'A short cut to Heaven!' III--A PARALLEL (DEACON BRODIE AND CHARLES PEACE) NOT a parallel, but a contrast, since at all points Peace is Brodie'santithesis. The one is the austerest of Classics, caring only for theultimate perfection of his work. The other is the gayest of Romantics, happiest when by the way he produces a glittering effect, or dazzles theear by a vain impertinence. Now, it is by thievery that Peace reachedmagnificence. A natural aptitude drove him from the fiddle to thecentre-bit. He did but rob, because genius followed the impulse. Hehad studied the remotest details of his business; he was sternlyprofessional in the conduct of his life, and, as became an oldgaol-bird, there was no antic of the policeman wherewith he was notfamiliar. Moreover, not only had he reduced house-breaking to a science, but, being ostensibly nothing better than a picture-frame maker, he hadinvented an incomparable set of tools wherewith to enter and evadehis neighbour's house. Brodie, on the other hand, was a thief fordistraction. His method was as slovenly as ignorance could make it. Though by trade a wright, and therefore a master of all the arts ofjoinery, he was so deficient in seriousness that he stole a coulterwherewith to batter the walls of the Excise Office. While Peace foughtthe battle in solitude, Brodie was not only attended by a gang, butlistened to the command of his subordinates, and was never permitted toperform a more intricate duty than the sounding of the alarm. And yethere is the ironical contrast. Peace, the professional thief, despisedhis brothers, and was never heard to patter a word of flash. Brodie, the amateur, courted the society of all cross coves, and would ratherexpress himself in Pedlar's French than in his choicest Scots. While theEnglishman scraped Tate and Brady from a one-stringed fiddle, the Scotlimped a chaunt from The Beggar's Opera, and thought himself a devilof a fellow. The one was a man about town masquerading as a thief; theother the most serious among housebreakers, singing psalms in all goodfaith. But if Peace was incomparably the better craftsman, Brodie was theprettier gentleman. Peace would not have permitted Brodie to drive hispony-trap the length of Evelina Road. But Brodie, in revenge, wouldhave cut Peace had he met him in the Corn-market. The one was a sombresavage, the other a jovial comrade, and it was a witty freak of fortunethat impelled both to follow the same trade. And thus you arrive atanother point of difference. The Englishman had no intelligence oflife's amenity. He knew naught of costume: clothes were the limit ofhis ambition. Dressed always for work, he was like the caterpillar whichassumes the green of the leaf, wherein it hides: he wore only such dudsas should attract the smallest notice, and separate him as far as mightbe from his business. But the Scot was as fine a dandy as ever took(haphazard) to the cracking of kens. If his refinement permittedno excess of splendour, he went ever gloriously and appropriatelyapparelled. He was well-mannered, cultured, with scarce a touch ofprovincialism to mar his gay demeanour: whereas Peace knew littleenough outside the practice of burglary, and the proper handling of therevolver. Our Charles, for example, could neither spell nor write; he dissembledhis low origin with the utmost difficulty, and at the best was plasteredover (when not at work) with the parochialism of the suburbs. So far thecontrast is complete; and even in their similarities there is an evidentdifference. Each led a double life; but while Brodie was most himselfamong his own kind, the real Peace was to be found not fiddle-scrapingin Evelina Road but marking down policemen in the dusky bywaysof Blackheath. Brodie's grandeur was natural to him; Peace'srespectability, so far as it transcended the man's origin, was a cloakof villainy. Each, again, was an inventor, and while the more innocent Brodiedesigned a gallows, the more hardened Peace would have gained notorietyby the raising of wrecks and the patronage of Mr. Plimsoll. And sinceboth preserved a certain courage to the end, since both died on thescaffold as becomes a man, the contrast is once more characteristic. Brodie's cynicism is a fine foil to the piety of Peace; and while eachend was natural after its own fashion, there is none who will deny tothe Scot the finer sense of fitness. Nor did any step in their careerexplain more clearly the difference in their temperament than theirdefinitions of the gallows. For Peace it is 'a short cut to Heaven';for Brodie it is 'a leap in the dark. ' Again the Scot has the advantage. Again you reflect that, if Peace is the most accomplished Classic amongthe housebreakers, the Deacon is the merriest companion who ever climbedthe gallows by the shoulders of the incomparable Macheath. THE MAN IN THE GREY SUIT THE Abbé Bruneau, who gave his shaven head in atonement for unnumberedcrimes, was a finished exponent of duplicity. In the eye of day and ofEntrammes he shone a miracle of well-doing; by night he prowled in thesecret places of Laval. The world watched him, habited in the decentblack of his calling; no sooner was he beyond sight of his parish thanhis valise was opened, and he arrayed himself--under the hedge, nodoubt--in a suit of jaunty grey. The pleasures for which he sacrificedthe lives of others and his own were squalid enough, but they were thebest a provincial brain might imagine; and he sinned the sins of a hedgepriest with a courage and effrontery which his brethren may well envy. Indeed, the Man in the Grey Suit will be sent down the ages with agrimmer scandal, if with a staler mystery, than the Man in the IronMask. He was born of parents who were certainly poor, and possibly honest, at Assé-le-Berenger. He counted a dozen Chouans among his ancestry, and brigandage swam in his blood. Even his childhood was crimson withcrimes, which the quick memory of the countryside long ago lost in thepride of having bred a priest. He stained his first cure of souls withthe poor, sad sin of arson, which the bishop, fearful of scandal andloth to check a promising career, condoned with a suitable advancement. At Entrammes, his next benefice, he entered into his full inheritance ofvillainy, and here it was--despite his own protest--that he devised thegrey suit which brought him ruin and immortality. To the wild, hilariousdissipation of Laval, the nearest town, he fell an immediate andunresisting prey. Think of the glittering lamps, the sparkling taverns, the bright-eyed women, the manifold fascinations, which are thecharacter and delight of this forgotten city! Why, if the Abbé Bruneaudoled out comfort and absolution at Entrammes--why should he not enjoyat Laval the wilder joys of the flesh? Lack of money was the onlyhindrance, since our priest was not of those who could pursue bonnesfortunes; ever he sighed for 'booze and the blowens, ' but 'booze and theblowens' he could only purchase with the sovereigns his honest callingdenied him. There was no resource but thievery and embezzlement, sinswhich led sometimes to falsehood or incendiarism, and at a pinch tothe graver enterprise of murder. But Bruneau was not one to boggle attrifles. Women he would encounter--young or old, dark or fair, ugly orbeautiful, it was all one to him--and the fools who withheld him richesmust be punished for their niggard hand. For a while a theft here andthere, a cunning extortion of money upon the promise of good works, sufficed for his necessities, but still he hungered for a coup, andpatiently he devised and watched his opportunity. Meanwhile his cunning protected him, and even if the gaze of suspicionfell upon him he contrived his orgies with so neat a discretion that theChurch, which is not wont to expose her malefactors, preserved atimid and an innocent silence. The Abbé disappeared with a commendableconstancy, and with that just sense of secrecy which should compel evenan archiepiscopal admiration. He was not of those who would drag hiscloth through the mire. Not until the darkness he loved so ferventlycovered the earth would he escape from the dull respectability ofEntrammes, nor did he ever thus escape unaccompanied by his famousvalise. The grey suit was an effectual disguise to his calling, andso jealous was he of the Church's honour that he never--unless in hiscups--disclosed his tonsure. One of his innumerable loves confessed inthe witness-box that Bruneau always retained his hat in the glare ofthe Café, protesting that a headache rendered him fatally susceptibleto draught; and such was his thoughtful punctilio that even in thecomparative solitude of a guilty bed-chamber he covered his shorn lockswith a nightcap. And while his conduct at Laval was unimpeachable, he always proved anice susceptibility in his return. A cab carried him within a discreetdistance of his home, whence, having exchanged the grey for the moresober black, he would tramp on foot, and thus creep in tranquil andunobserved. But simple as it is to enjoy, enjoyment must still bepurchased, and the Abbé was never guilty of a meanness. The less guiltyscheme was speedily staled, and then it was that the Abbé bethought himof murder. His first victim was the widow Bourdais, who pursued the honest callingof a florist at Laval. Already the curate was on those terms of intimacywhich unite the robber with the robbed; for some months earlier he hadimposed a forced loan of sixty francs upon his victim. But on the 15thof July 1893, he left Entrammes, resolved upon a serious measure. Theblack valise was in his hand, as he set forth upon the arid, windy road. Before he reached Laval he had made the accustomed transformation, andit was no priest, but a layman, doucely dressed in grey, that awaitedMme. Bourdais' return from the flower-market. He entered the shop withthe coolness of a friend, and retreated to the door of the parlour whentwo girls came to make a purchase. No sooner had the widow joined himthan he cut her throat, and, with the ferocity of the beast who lovesblood as well as plunder, inflicted some forty wounds upon her witheredframe. His escape was simple and dignified; he called the cabman, whoknew him well, and who knew, moreover, what was required of him; andthe priest was snugly in bed, though perhaps exhausted with blood andpleasure, when the news of the murder followed him to his village. Next day the crime was common gossip, and the Abbé's friends tookcounsel with him. One there was astonished that the culprit remainedundiscovered. 'But why should you marvel?' said Bruneau. 'I could killyou and your wife at your own chimney-corner without a soul knowing. HadI taken to evil courses instead of to good I should have been a terribleassassin. ' There is a touch of the pride which De Quincey attributesto Williams in this boastfulness, and throughout the parallel isirresistible. Williams, however, was the better dandy; he put on adress-coat and patent-leather pumps because the dignity of his workdemanded a fitting costume. And Bruneau wore the grey suit not withouta hope of disguise. Yet you like to think that the Abbé lookedcomplacently upon his valise, and had forethought for the cut of hisprofessional coat; and if he be not in the first flight of artistry, remember his provincial upbringing, and furnish the proper excuse. Meanwhile the scandal of the murdered widow passed into forgetfulness, and the Abbé was still impoverished. Already he had robbed his vicar, and the suspicion of the Abbé Fricot led on to the final and thedetected crime. Now Fricot had noted the loss of money and of bonds, andthough he refrained from exposure he had confessed to a knowledge ofthe criminal. M. Bruneau was naturally sensitive to suspicion, and hedetermined upon the immediate removal of this danger to his peace. OnJanuary 2, 1894, M. Fricot returned to supper after administering theextreme unction to a parishioner. While the meal was preparing, hewent into his garden in sabots and bareheaded, and never again was seenalive. The supper cooled, the vicar was still absent; the murderer, hungry with his toil, ate not only his own, but his victim's share ofthe food, grimly hinting that Fricot would not come back. Suicide wasdreamed of, murder hinted; up and down the village was the search made, and none was more zealous than the distressed curate. At last a peasant discovered some blocks of wood in the well, and beforelong blood-stains revealed themselves on the masonry. Speedily was thebody recovered, disfigured and battered beyond recognition, and thevoice of the village went up in denunciation of the Abbé Bruneau. Immunity had made the culprit callous, and in a few hours suspicionbecame certainty. A bleeding nose was the lame explanation given forthe stains which were on his clothes, on the table, on the keys ofhis harmonium. A quaint and characteristic folly was it that drove themurderer straight to the solace of his religion. You picture him, hotand red-handed from murder, soothing his battered conscience with somedevilish Requiem for the unshrived soul he had just parted from itsbroken body, and leaving upon the harmonium the ineradicable traces ofhis guilt. Thus he lived, poised between murder and the Church, spendingupon the vulgar dissipation of a Breton village the blood and money ofhis foolish victims. But for him 'les tavernes et les filles' of Lavalmeant a veritable paradise, and his sojourn in the country is proofenough of a limited cunning. Had he been more richly endowed, Paris hadbeen the theatre of his crimes. As it is, he goes down to posterity asthe Man in the Grey Suit, and the best friend the cabmen of Laval everknew. Them, indeed, he left inconsolable. MONSIEUR L'ABBÉ The childhood of the Abbé Rosselot is as secret as his origin, and noman may know whether Belfort or Bavaria smiled upon his innocence. Alike mystery enshrouds his early manhood, and the malice of his foes, who are legion, denounces him for a Jesuit of Innsbruck. But since hehas lived within the eye of the world his villainies have been revealedas clearly as his attainments, and history provides him no other rivalin the corruption of youth than the infamous Thwackum. It is not every scholar's ambition to teach the elements, and Rosselotadopted his modest calling as a cloak of crime. No sooner was heinstalled in a mansion than he became the mansion's master, andhenceforth he ruled his employer's domain with the tyrannical severityof a Grand Inquisitor. His soul wrapped in the triple brass ofarrogance, he even dared to lay his hands upon food before his betterswere served; and presently, emboldened by success, he would order thedinners, reproach the cook with a too lavish use of condiments, anddescend with insolent expostulation into the kitchen. In a week he hadopened the cupboards upon a dozen skeletons, and made them rattle theirrickety bones up and down the draughty staircases, until the inmatesshivered with horror and the terrified neighbours fled the hauntedcastle as a lazar-house. Once in possession of a family secret, he felthimself secure, and henceforth he was free to browbeat his employer andto flog his pupil to the satisfaction of his waspish nature. Moreover, he was endowed with all the insight and effrontery of a trainedjournalist. So sedulous was he in his search after the truth, thatneither man nor woman could deny him confidence. And, as vinegar flowedin his veins for blood, it was his merry sport to set wife againsthusband and children against father. Not even were the servantssafe from his watchful inquiry, and housemaids and governesses alikeentrusted their hopes and fears to his malicious keeping. And when thehouse had retired to rest, with what a sinister delight did he chuckleover the frailties and infamies, a guilty knowledge of which he haddragged from many an unwilling sinner! To oust him, when installed, wasa plain impossibility, for this wringer of hearts was only too glibin the surrender of another's scandal; and as he accepted the lastscurrility with Christian resignation, his unfortunate employer couldbut strengthen his vocabulary and patiently endure the presence of thissmiling, demoniacal tutor. But a too villainous curiosity was not the Abbé's capital sin. Not only did he entertain his leisure with wrecking the happiness of aunited family, but he was an enemy open and declared of France. Itwas his amiable pastime at the dinner-table, when he had first helpedhimself to such delicacies as tempted his dainty palate, to pronouncea pompous eulogy upon the German Emperor. France, he would say with anexultant smile, is a pays pourri, which exists merely to be the footballof Prussia. She has but one hope of salvation--still the monsterspeaks--and that is to fall into the benign occupation of a vigorousrace. Once upon a time--the infamy is scarce credible--he was conductinghis young charges past a town-hall, over the lintel of whose doorglittered those proud initials 'R. F. ' 'What do they stand for?' askedthis demon Barlow. And when the patriotic Tommy hesitated for an answer, the preceptor exclaimed with ineffable contempt, 'Race de fous'! It isno wonder, then, that this foe of his fatherland feared to receive aletter openly addressed; rather he would slink out under cover of nightand seek his correspondence at the poste restante, like a guilty loveror a British tourist. The Château de Presles was built for his reception. It was haunted by asecret, which none dare murmur in the remotest garret. There was no morethan a whisper of murder in the air, but the Marquis shuddered when hiswife's eye frowned upon him. True, the miserable Menaldo had disappearedfrom his seminary ten years since, but threats of disclosure wereuttered continually, and respectability might only be purchased by aprofound silence. Here was the Abbé's most splendid opportunity, and heseized it with all the eagerness of a greedy temperament. The Marquise, a wealthy peasant, who was rather at home on the wild hill-side than inher stately castle, became an instant prey to his devilish intrigue. The governess, an antic old maid of fifty-seven, whose conversation wasdesigned to bring a blush to the cheek of the most hardened dragoon, was immediately on terms of so frank an intimacy that she flung breadpellets at him across the table, and joyously proposed, if we maybelieve the priest on his oath, to set up housekeeping with him, thatthey might save expense. Two high-spirited boys were always at hand toencourage his taste for flogging, and had it not been for the Marquis, the Abbé's cup would have been full to overflowing. But the Marquisloved not the lean, ogling instructor of his sons, and presently beganto assail him with all the abuse of which he was master. He charged theAbbé with unspeakable villainy; salop and saligaud were the terms inwhich he would habitually refer to him. He knew the rascal for a spy, and no modesty restrained him from proclaiming his knowledge. Butwhatever insults were thrown at the Abbé he received with a grincomplacent as Shylock's, for was he not conscious that when he liked thepound of flesh was his own! With a fiend's duplicity he laid his plans of ruin and death. TheMarquise, swayed to his will, received him secretly in the blue room(whose very colour suggests a guilty intrigue), though never, uponthe oath of an Abbé, when the key was turned in the lock. A journey toSwitzerland had freed him from the haunting suspicion of the Marquis, and at last he might compel the wife to denounce her husband asa murderer. The terrified woman drew the indictment at the Abbé'sdictation, and when her husband returned to St. Amand he was instantlythrust into prison. Nothing remained but to cajole the sons into anexpressed hatred of their father, and the last enormity was committed bya masterpiece of cunning. 'Your father's one chance of escape, ' arguedthis villain in a cassock, 'is to be proved an inhuman ruffian. Swear that he beat you unmercifully and you will save him from theguillotine. ' All the dupes learned their lesson with a certainty whichreflects infinite credit upon the Abbé's method of instruction. For once in his life the Abbé had been moved by greed as well as byvillainy. His early exploits had no worse motive than the satisfactionof an inhuman lust for cruelty and destruction. But the Marquise wasrich, and when once her husband's head were off, might not the Abbé reaphis share of the gathered harvest? The stakes were high, but the gamewas worth the playing, and Rosselot played it with spirit and energyunto the last card. His appearance in court is ever memorable, and ashis ferret eyes glinted through glass at the President, he seemed thevillain of some Middle Age Romance. His head, poised upon a lean, bonyframe, was embellished with a nose thin and sharp as the blade of aknife; his tightly compressed lips were an indication of the rascal'sdetermination. 'Long as a day in Lent'--that is how a spectatordescribed him; and if ever a sinister nature glared through a sinisterfigure, the Abbé's character was revealed before he parted his lips inspeech. Unmoved he stood and immovable; he treated the imprecations ofthe Marquis with a cold disdain; as the burden of proof grew heavy onhis back, he shrugged his shoulders in weary indifference. He told hismonstrous story with a cynical contempt, which has scarce its equal inthe history of crime; and priest, as he was, he proved that he didnot yield to the Marquis himself in the Rabelaisian amplitude of hisvocabulary. He brought charges against the weird world of Presles withan insouciance and brutality which defeated their own aim. He describedthe vices of his master and the sins of the servants in a slang whichwould sit more gracefully upon an idle roysterer than upon a pious Abbé. And, his story ended, he leered at the Court with the satisfaction ofone who had discharged a fearsome duty. But his rascality overshot its mark; the Marquise, obedient to hispriestly casuistry, displayed too fierce a zeal in the execution of hiscommands. And he took to flight, hoping to lose in the larger world ofParis the notoriety which his prowess won him among the poor despisedBerrichons. He left behind for our consolation a snatch of philosophywhich helps to explain his last and greatest achievement. 'Those whohave money exist only to be fleeced. ' Thus he spake with a recklessrevelation of self. Yet the mystery of his being is still unpierced. Heis traitor, schemer, spy; but is he an Abbé? Perhaps not. At any rate, he once attended the 'Messe des Morts, ' and was heard to mumble a'Credo, ' which, as every good Catholic remembers, has no place in thatsolemn service. ***** Printed by T. And A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the EdinburghUniversity Press