e much talked of,
in order to which this seemed to them the shortest course. But these
observations that I have made will be better illustrated from the
following lives, than they could have been any other way.

Peter Levee was descended from honest and reputable parents, who gave
him a very good education, and afterwards bound him out apprentice to a
silk weaver; but such as the perverse disposition of this unfortunate
Lad, such his love of gaming, and such his continual inclination to
debauched company, that nothing better could be expected from him than
what afterwards befell him. Yet his understanding was very tolerable, he
did not want a sufficient share of wit, and in a word his capacity
altogether might have enabled him to have lived very well, if his
prodigious vices had not prevented it by hurrying him into misfortunes.
It was remarkable in this criminal that his long habit of carrying in
the detestable trade of stealing, to which he had incurred himself in
every shape as much as possible, had given so odd a cast to his visage
that it was impossible for a man to look him in the face without
immediately guessing him to be a rogue.

While yet a boy, he had been so accustomed to confinement in the
Compter, especially in Wood Street, that he had contracted a friendship
with all the under-officers in that prison, who treated him with great
leniency as often as he came there. Picking pockets, sneaking goods out
of shops, snatching them through windows, and such other petty facts,
were the employments of his junior years. As he grew bigger, he grew
riper in all sorts of villainy, though never a fellow had worse luck in
dishonest attempts, for he was always detected, and very frequently had
gone through the lesser punishments of the Law, such as whipping and
hard labour. At one time he lay four years in Newgate for a fine, and
this finished the course of his villainous education, for from the time
he got out, he never ceased to practice robbing in the streets, and on
the roads to the villages near London, until he and his companions fell
into the hands of Justice, and went altogether to their last adventure
at Tyburn.

John Featherby, the second of these criminals, had received a greater
share of education than any of the rest. His father had been a man of
tolerable circumstances, and with great care provided that this young
fellow should not be ignorant of anything that might be necessary or
convenient for him to k