A NOTED HIGHWAYMAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2168, 12 September 1895, Page 7

A NOTED HIGHWAYMAN.

Claude Duval, who was executed at Tyburn, is the most dramatic figure we have of celebrated highwaymen. The Dick Turpin who rode the famous Black Bobs from London to York ia an altogether common man to the graceful Frenchman, who took to tbe road as a profession, and made hii career more like a chapter of romance, dancing minuet 3on Hounslow Heath with fair aristocrats, and then lightly returning them their gems and jewellery — never committing murder, bub confining himself to " Rjbbery under Arms," bnt under very different circumstances to Captain Starlight, who adapted himself in Rolf Boldcewood's novel to the peculiar circumstances of Australian life in the bush. There is some peculiar attractiveness abou w Claud© Dnval, who dreesed like a gentleman, and acted his part without tbe meanness, the recklessness of humMi life, and with a long defiance under many disguiges of the police, under that monster of vilenes3, Jonathan Wild. The gay light-heartedi es » with which he went to the scaffold was all of a piece with hii life on the road, and although it is perhaps wrong to have sympathy with on? who did not reverence the laws of meum and teum, and who justly met a disgraceful death as one of the outlaws of society, the impossibility to resist tha attractiveness of his character is jast the same as the impossibility not to admire the quality of Vanity Fair Cigarettes. The more they are smoked the more they are liked, and they deserve the splendid reputation tiiey hwtt secured by all judges of quality.