A NOTED HIGHWAYMAN.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXI, Issue 108, 12 May 1896, Page 3

A NOTED HIGHWAYMAN.

Claude Duval, who was executed at Tyburn, ia the most dramatic figure we have >t celebrated highwaymen. The Dick Turaiti who rode the famous Black Bess from London to York is an altogether common nan to the graceful Frenchman who took to :he road as a profession, and made his career more like a chapter of romance, dancing ninuets on Hounslow Heath with fait iristocrats, and then lightly returning them :heir gems and jewellery — never committing murder, but confining himself to " Robbery lnder Anns," but under very different cir> Himstances to Captain Starlight, who adapted nimself m Rolf Boldrewood's novel to the peculiar circumstances of Australian life m ;he bush. There is some peculiar attractiveness about Dkuule Duval, who dressed like a gentleman, md acted his part without the meanness, :ho recklessness of human life, and with a .ong defiance under many disguises of the johec, under that monster of vileness, Jonathan Wild. The gay light-heartednesa with which he tveut to the scaffold was all of a pieco with iis life on tho road, and although it is perhaps wrong to have sympathy with one ivho did not reverence the laws of meum and teum, and who justly met a disgraceful leath as one of the outlaws of society, the impossibility to resist the attractiveness of ,ii 3 character is just the same as the impossibility« not to admire the quality oi Vanity Fair Cigarettea. The more they are smoked the more they are liked, and they deserve the splendid reputation they have secured by all judges of quality.