Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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The career of the notorious culprit whose doings are chronicled in this work furnishes the novelist with a moral. It will be clearly demonstrated to those who peruse these pages that, sooner or later, justice overtakes the guilty, and that it is impossible for the most astute and cunning scoundrel—​such as Peace has proved himself to be—​to escape punishment.

A life of crime is always a life of care, for the hearts of the guilty tremble for the past, for the present, and for the future. The author of the “Life of Peace” reprobates in the strongest degree that species of literature whose graduates do their best to cast a dignity upon the gallows, and strive to shed the splendour of fascinating romance upon the paths of crime that lead to it—​to make genius tributary to murder, and literature to theft, to dignify not the mean but the guilty.

Let crime and its perpetrators be depicted as conscience sees them, as morality brands them; let them stand out in prominent but repulsive relief. There is yet wanted a picture of crime and its consequences true to nature and conscience, and it is hoped that the present serial will, in some measure, supply that want.