nineteenth century. In Charley Peace alone is revived that good-
humoured popularity which in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries fell to the lot of Claude Duval, Dick Turpin and Jack
Sheppard. But Peace has one grievance against posterity; he has
endured one humiliation which these heroes have been spared. His
name has been omitted from the pages of the "Dictionary of
National Biography." From Duval, in the seventeenth, down to
the Mannings, Palmer, Arthur Orton, Morgan and Kelly, the
bushrangers, in the nineteenth century, many a criminal, far less
notable or individual than Charley Peace, finds his or her place
in that great record of the past achievements of our countrymen.
Room has been denied to perhaps the greatest and most naturally
gifted criminal England has produced, one whose character is all
the more remarkable for its modesty, its entire freedom from that
vanity and vain-gloriousness so common among his class.

The only possible reason that can be suggested for so singular an
omission is the fact that in the strict order of alphabetical
succession the biography of Charles Peace would have followed
immediately on that of George Peabody. It may have been thought
that the contrast was too glaring, that even the exigencies of
national biography had no right to make the philanthropist Pea-

body rub shoulders with man's constant enemy, Peace. To the
memory of Peace these few pages can make but poor amends for the
supreme injustice, but, by giving a particular and authentic
account of his career, they may serve as material for the
correction of this grave omission should remorse overtake those
responsible for so undeserved a slur on one of the most unruly of
England's famous sons.