The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 30, April, 1860 by Various
page 60 of 286 (20%)
page 60 of 286 (20%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
This man was without a cravat when his picture was taken, and his white
shirt-collar, coming up high in the neck, has the appearance of a white neckerchief. This trifle of dress, with the intellectual look of the man, strikes every observer as giving him a clerical appearance. The picture strongly resembles--more in air, perhaps, than in feature--the large engraved portrait of Summerfield. There is not so much of calm comprehensiveness of thought, and there are more angles. Thief though he be, he has fair language,--not florid or rhetorical, but terse and very much to the point. If bred as a divine, he would have held his place among the "brilliants" of the time, and been as original, erratic, or _outre_ as any. What a fortune lost! It is part of the fatality for the man not to know it, at least in time. Even villany would have put him into his proper place, but for that film over the mental vision. "If rogues," said Franklin, "knew the advantages attached to the practice of the virtues, they would become honest men from mere roguery." Many of the faces of this Rogues' Gallery are very well worth consideration. Of a dozen leading pickpockets, who work singly, or two or three together, and are mostly English, what is first noted is not favorable to English teaching or probity;--their position sits easily upon them. There is not one that gives indication of his having passed through any mental struggle before he sat down in life as a thief. Though all men capable of thought, they have not thought very deeply upon this point. One of them is a natural aristocrat,--a man who could keep the crowd aloof by simple volition, and without offense; nothing whatever harsh in him,--polite to all, and amiable to a fault with his fellows. There would be style in everything he did or said. He is one to |
|