bout the whole business.

Sheppard is typical of all this. There is a certain charm about the
rascal; his humour is undeniable; he is a philosopher, taking all that
comes with easy grace, even his betrayal by his brother and others
who should have been loyal to him. Jack Sheppard has the good-humoured
carelessness of that most engaging of all eighteenth century
malefactors, Deacon Brodie. It is quite otherwise with Charley Peace.
There is little enough gay or debonair about him. Compared with
Sheppard, Peace is as drab as the surroundings of mid-Victorian crime
are drab compared with the picturesqueness of eighteenth century
England.

Crime in the nineteenth century becomes more scientific in its methods
and in its detection also. The revolver places a more hasty, less
decorous weapon than the old-fashioned pistol in the hands of the
determined burglar. The literature of crime, such as it is, becomes
vulgar and prosaic. Peace has no charm about him, no gaiety, but he has
the virtues of his defects. He, unlike Sheppard, shuns company; he works
alone, never depending on accomplices; a "tight cock," as Sheppard would
have phrased it, and not relying on a like quality of tightness in
his fellows. Sheppard is a slave to his women, Edgeworth Bess and Mrs.
Maggot; Mrs. Peace and Sue Thompson are the slaves of Peace. Sheppard
loves to stroll openly about the London streets in his fine suit
of black, his ruffled shirt and his silver-hilted sword. Peace lies
concealed at Peckham beneath the homely disguise of old Mr. Thompson.
Sheppard is an imp, Peace a goblin. But both have that gift of
personality which, in their own peculiar line, lifts them out from the
ruck, and makes them Jack and Charley to those who like to know famous
people by cheery nicknames.

And so we must accept Charles Peace as a remarkable character, whose
unquestioned gifts as a man of action were squandered on a criminal
career; neither better nor worse than a great number of other persons,
whose good fortune it has been to develop similar qualities under
happier surroundings. There are many more complete villains than the
ordinary criminal, who contrive to go through life without offending
against the law. Close and scientific investigation has shown that the
average convicted criminal differs intellectually from the normal person
only in a slightly lower level of intelligence, a condition that may
well be explained by the fact that the convicted criminal