Sept, 10.
We have been reading lately book by Mr. Sydney Dark, a well known writer, with the intriguing title "Twelve Bad Men. "We wonder why it is that the biographies of bad men should be so much more interesting than the lives of good men. We venture to think that if the title of the book had been "Twelve Good Men" the author would have found difficulty in finding a publisher who would take the risk of publication and, if this initial handicap had been overcome, we are sure that the sale of the book on the lives of good men would Ihave been meagre in comparison that of the present volume which deals with those of an opposite character. The adjectives "bad" and "good" are both relative. If there were no bad men there would be no good ones, just as if there were no colour in the world but a flaming ved there would be no red colour at all, Comparison being absent there would be a world of dead uniformity which would be quite as uninteresting if it were all good as it would be were it all dad, We believe there isa Chinese proverb which asserts that there are only two "good men; one of these is dead and the other not yet born, If there be truth in the saying then its opposite must also be true and the absolutely bad man be as'
xistent as the absolutely The writer of this is catho-
Jie in his tastes. He pillories four Frenchmen in his book. They' are Louis XI, Talleyrand Fouehé and Robespierre. There are four Italians, Cellini, Mazarin, Cesare Borgia and Casanova. England has three men premi ent in badness. They are Thomas Cromwell, Judge Jeffries and Marlborough. Germany has but one—Frederick the Great. Tastes must vary in their appreciation of badness as in other matters for we doubt whether if fifty authors had set out to write on this thesis any one of them would have chosen more than one or two of those _pilloried in this book as being entitled to a place in his rogues gallery. It ig plain that there are no laok of bad men and if the story of each and all were written it would be 'a fascinating volume but, as w: said of the biography of the one: man who is recognized by. the world as the one flawless chat acter who ever trod this earth, if all were said that could be said "the world itself would not contain the books that would need to be written Since badness and goodness are complementary and the bad shades off into goodness as goodness dips down into badness, it' is worth while asking ourselves whether there is any one chai acteristic which distinguishes the really bad man from his fellows. We think there is and, incident tally, we note that there are no great criminals included in the ist we have given. There are no low down ruffians, but a roll call of persons eminent in their day and generation and who, for the most part, died, if not in the odour of sanctity, at Toast, in the peaceable possession of a quiet bad. The one outstanding feature of their badness is that nor did they desire that their passing should be marked by a massacre of those they disliked fas did Herod the Great. They were bad men but were rest table in their badness. Their vice was supreme selfishness They wanted power, pleasure and the enjoyment of the good things lof life, These are things we all want and to secure them in such [degree as seems to be within the compass of our abilities we expend our energies in our several spheres of labour. But. the ordinary man recognizes the rules in the game of life and lexereises his energies with due regard for the rights of others. The bad man is dominated, as are the insane, by an exaggerate ed egoism and, for him, the rights of others are merely unpleasant restrictions to be cirlcumvented if possible and trampled upon if necessary. The bad man with mediocre abilities is only an unpleasant fellow who always wants his own way, loves this case and pushes himself to the front with a nasty inconsiderateness which marks him lout as being "no class." The [bad man, when in power, is perfectly callous and though he may be a fop with finnicking ways is like that king of whom it was written that he "bore to gaze on torture but dared not look: on war." Hig squeamishness only means, that he dislikes the unpleasantness of seeing the agonies of his victims but has no compunction about their suf-forings as long as it is not obtruded on his notice.
We have each in us the germ fof the bad man, We cannot help awarding him the compliment of four admiration for the deter-jon with which he pres: to his goal but the result of our: [study of the lives of those champions of badness of whom Mr. Dark writes is that we come to the conclusion that, with all their cleverness and unscrupulfonsness, they were not happy even when they were successful. The end they pursued was not worth achieving and we cannot help believing that an hon vy lives a happier life and Jdies a more contented man than ithe great Frederick of whom Mirabeau wrote at the time of hhis death "There is gloom every where but no sorrow. Not a {ace that does not express relief. Jand hope, Not a sigh, not a word of praise. After all, the world's belief in goodness is justified by this study of badness.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.