A NOTED HIGHWAYMAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2207, 18 June 1896, Page 44

A NOTED HIGHWAYMAN.

Claude Duval, who was executed .at Tyburn, i 3 the most dramatic figure we> have of celebrated highwaymen. The Dick Turpin who rode the famous Black Beet from London to York is an altogether,/ common man to the graceful Frenchman, who took to the road as a profession, and made his career more like a chapter of romance; dancing minuets on floatnlow Heath with fair , aris»;oorats, and. then, lightly returning them their gems and jewpllery'-^never committing murder, but 'Confining. himself to ♦•Robbery under. Arms,!'. but under very diffe- 4 rent circumstances to Captain Starlight, who adapjbed himself in Rolf B.oldrewood's novel to the peculiar circumstances of Australian life in the bush.

There is some, peculiar attractiveness about Claude Dtxval, who dressed like a gentleman, ..and acted hie part without the meanness, the reckletsneis of human life, and with a long defiance under many disguises of the police, "under that monster of vileness, Jonathan Wild.

The gay light-heartedness with which he went to the scaffold was all of a piece with his life on the road, and although it is perhaps wrong. to have sympathy with one who did noli, reverence the laws of meum and teum, and who jQßbly rued a disgraceful death as one of the outs b{\vs of society, tbe imposßibiliJy to re6iet the attractiveness of his'character, is just the same as the impoß3ihility not to admire the quality of Vanity Fair Cigarettes. The more, they are smoked tbe more they are .likedi 'and , they deserve, the" splendid reputation they have secured 1 by all judges of quality.

— Difficulties are always mountains till we meet them, and molo-hlUs. when we have passed them, • ' /■