Conduct of life -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Parables
=The County Gentleman.=—“Mr. Turner is evidently an exceedingly close
observer of men and matters, and in addition he has a considerable
power of analysis of emotions and impulses of the springs which move
to action and the restraining forces which control men’s natural
desires and ambitions.... ‘The Comedy of Progress’ is throughout
wittily and well written, and ought to interest those who like a
serious subject carefully treated, and with more than an occasional
passage of pure fun and humour.”
The Comedy of Progress
Crown 8vo., cloth gilt, SIX SHILLINGS.
The Lyons Mail
The true story of the murders, told by a descendant of the murdered
courier.
_Translated from the French by_
ROBERT H. SHERARD.
Generations of people have wept over the sufferings of Joseph
Lesurques, who was guillotined for the murders of the Lyons Mail
affair. It was supposed that he was an innocent man, the victim of a
fatal resemblance to a scoundrel named Dubosc. His case has been used
by hundreds of barristers to bolster up a defence based on the theory
of mistaken identity. This book demolishes the theory of his
innocence. It is written by a descendant of one of the victims, who
proves that Lesurques was guilty, that his sufferings were no more
than he merited, and that if he went to the guillotine dressed in
white, the garb of innocence, this was only a final piece of duplicity
on his part. A true story of the “good old times” in France after the
Revolution, with dramatic pictures of the unequal struggle between the
police and the army of scoundrels. In illustration of the state of
things in the Year IV. (1796) an account is given of the doings of a
certain Bondroux, who was the Dick Turpin of the Lyons highroad.
Few chapters in fiction are more striking than the true account of the
arrest of Joseph Lesurques at the Assize Court in Paris, during the
trial of his accomplices; a fresh illustration of the resistless force
or fascination of danger which draws criminals on by the most
imprudent acts to their destruction.
It exposes in its true light the character of the famous
Conventionnel, Merlin de Douai, who inspired Victor Hugo with one of
his noblest creations, and suggests the reflection that if one knew
the truth many names which have come down to posterity with immaculate
reputations would stand in a different place in the public esteem.
In view of recent efforts in France to bring about the revision of a
celebrated case, the various unsuccessful attempts of the Lesurques
family to have the judgment passed on their ancestor quashed will be
read with interest. They show the inviolability of the “_chose
jugée._”
Price Six Shillings.
THREE STORIES OF THE STAGE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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