Was there ever a more melancholy, remorse-stricken wretch than Cap'n Davis? Or a gentler and seedier poet than Herrick? Or a more finely sodden and soaked old rum sport than Huish (not--Whish!) But it was not until they fell in with Attwater that their weakness as scoundrels was exposed. Attwater was so splendidly religious! He was determined to have things right if he had to have them so by bloodshed; he saved souls by bullets. Things were right when they were as he thought they should be. And believing so, with Torquemada, Alexander Sixtus and other most religious brethren, he was ready to set up the stake and fagot and cauterize sin with fire. One thing you can say about the religious folks that are big with cocksureness and a mission--they may make mistakes, but the mistake doesn't talk and criticise. * * * * * The only rascal worthy to travel in company with Stevenson's rascals is the Chevalier Balibari, of Castle Barry, in Ireland, whose admirable memoirs have been so well told by Mr. Thackeray. The Baron de la Motte in “Denis Duval,” was advantageously born to ornament the purple and fine linen of picturesque unrighteousness--but his was a brief star that fell unfinished from its place amidst the Pleiades. Thackeray's genius ran more to disreputable men than to actual villains. But he drew two scoundrels that will serve as beacon lights to any clean-souled youth with the instinct to take warning. One was Lord Steyne, the other, Dr. George Brand Firmin; one the aristocratic, class-bred, cynical brute, the other the cold, tuft-hunting trained hypocrite. What encouragement of self-respect Judas Iscariot might have received if he had met Dr. Firmin! Dr. Chadband, Mr. Pecksniff, Bill Sykes, Fagin, Mr. Murdstone, of Dickens' family--they are all strong in impression, but wholly unreal; mere stage villains and caricatures. A villain who has no good traits, no hobbies of kindness and affection, is never born into the world; he is always created by grotesque novel writers. The villains of Dumas, Hugo, Balzac, Daudet are French. There may have been, or may be now such prototypes alive in France--because the Dreyfus case occurred in France, and no doubt much can happen in that fine, fertile country which translators cannot fully convey over the frontiers; but they have always seemed to me first cousins to my friends, the ogres, the evil magicians and the werewolves, and, in that much, not quite natural. For heroes of the genuine cavalleria type, plumed, doubleted, pumpt and magnificent, give me Dumas; for good folks and true, the great American Fenimore Cooper; but for the blessed company of blooming, breathing rascals, Stevenson and Thackeray all the time. VII. HEROES THE NATURE AND THE FLOWER OF THEM--THE GALLANT D'ARTAGNAN OR THE GLORIOUS BUSSY.