any interpretation, import a comparison between the terror of 1793 and the government of the king, even to the disadvan'tage of the latter:-That, for this reason, the said article in 'the passages above-mentioned, and especially in the last, has a tendency to excite hatred and contempt of the king's go

'vernment:

'Jay is acquitted.

'Jouy condemned to a month's imprisonment, and fifty francs, ' costs of suit.'

We have given this judicial record at length, to enable our readers to form some opinion of the looseness of French jurisprudence, and their inferiority to ourselves, at least, in the forms of justice,-those forms which a great writer* of their own pronounces to be essential to its administration. But what becomes of M. Jay, who had been acquitted? The judgement is appealed against (a judgement of acquittal!!!) by the Procureur Genéral, and brought before the Cour Royale. M. Jay, formerly a member of the bar, pleaded his own cause; but in vain. The judgement pronounced in his favour by the court below, is reversed, and he is condemned to a month's imprisonment, and 16 francs costs. But in what form is this judgement clothed? Having confirmed the judgement of the court below, in regard to M. Jouy, it thus goes on:- Quant à Jay, attendu que l'article Boyer-Fonfrêde, dont il s'est reconnu l'auteur, contient des outrages à la morale publique, la cour le 'condamne à un mois d'emprisonment et 16 fr. d'amende.' M. Jay's pleading is concise and luminous.

'I am here,' he says, 'before you, for an article in which the condemnation of Louis XVI. is blamed. I confess, I did not expect to be accused of such an offence,-an offence which I believe has never been denounced, but in the code of the republic. Let me suppose, gentlemen, that I had been accused of the same crime, before the revolutionary tribunal. Would not the circumstance of blaming the deed of the 21st of January, have been deemed a crime, a flagrant act of royalism? How is it then, that I am brought before this court, a cour royale, for the very same thing that would have brought me before a tribunal of the Revolution? It is not one of the least among the extraordinary circumstances of the times. It is, however, capable of being explained. Party spirit, under whatever banners it exhibits itself, may be easily known by its intolerance and spirit of persecution. It arrogates the right of penetrating into our consciences, of reading our hearts; a privilege which belongs to God alone, the only accuser without passion, the only judge inaccessible to error. Do not expect, gentlemen, that I shall enter into an elaborate reason

* Montesquieu.

ing to shew that blame is not approbation. As to my intention, I have already declared it. I sought only to exhibit a great historical lesson;-to shew that the blood of kings rises to heaven, and descends only in calamities upon nations.'

With regard to the article on the Fauchers, for which M. Jouy incurred the penalties of the law, it leads to a train of melancholy forebodings as to the civil condition of a nation who are exposed to rules of law so severe in operation, but so vague in principle. The biographical article which narrated their lives and their deaths, ought to have been allowed the privileges of history. In whatever point of view the innocence or guilt of those general officers might be contemplated by others, their historian must be allowed his own feelings and his own partialities. They were serving during the hundred days in the army of Napoleon, at Bourdeaux, and at a great distance from the theatre of public affairs. The restoration was not announced to them. Parties ran high, and during an interregnum of some hours, the orders of the newly-constituted authorities were resisted by officers who had sworn fidelity, and were in the actual commission of the old ones. They were tried and condemned before a military court, whose sentence admits neither of appeal nor of a jury, and is out of the reach of royal mercy. It was surely permitted to M. Jouy, to lament the procedure. The best panegyric on the regular tribunals of a country, is the reprobation of those occasional courts,those military commissions, which are alike inconsistent with law and with justice, and which have been always called in France by the phrase tribunaux d'exception. The revision of condemnations is one of the prerogatives of history. The nar rative of the unhappy Calas, the victim of judicial error, was permitted under the old government of the Bourbons.

"I myself,' exclaims M. Dupin, the eloquent advocate of M. Jouy, published, during the usurpation, a discussion of the acts of the commission instituted against the Duke d'Enghien. My book was suppressed, but not prosecuted. But though it was suppressed, the government had at least the modesty, or, if you please, the policy, not to distort it into a crime. How the "times are changed!" How many facts are explained by those words! A man has been condemned and executed at one period, who would have been saved, had be been tried a few days later. A thief is always a thief; a murderer is always a murderer; but, in politics, every thing depends upon the moment-and all the processes now so celebrated, how are they to be accounted for, but by the changes of the times?'

We have been diverted by these considerations from the "Hermites en Prison." M. M. Jouy and Jay solaced themselves during their detention, by composing two volumes of

essays, or rather of meditations, anecdotes of their fellowprisoners, incidents, some of a melancholy kind, not uncommon in these abodes of misery, others of a humorous cast. The reflections are, as we have already hinted, not very profound, and, to confess the truth, not very amusing. The interior administration of St. Pélagie is an interesting topic, and throws great light upon the police of Paris. The abuses of the prison, its unnecessary rigours, and, above all, the confounding men like M. M. Jouy and Jay with the worst malefactors, cry aloud for redress. In the first volume, a M. Magallon, a literary man imprisoned for a political offence, is introduced. His character is pleasingly sketched. A few days afterwards, just as the Authors were felicitating themselves upon the prospect of soothing the slow hours of their captivity, by the society of so accomplished a companion, M. Magallon receives an order to be removed to Poissy, twenty-one miles from Paris. Remonstrance, the tears, the intreaties of his relations, are of no avail. The order is inexorable. He begs the favour of a carriage, offering himself to defray the expense. The request is refused, and he is literally marched, chained to the hand of a common criminal, who was infected with the itch, along the streets of Paris, and upwards of twenty-one miles, in a debilitated state of body.

The second volume is the best. After some sentimental effusions about women in general, conceived in the French, that is, in the worst possible taste, we were pleased with some feeling remarks upon the female visitors, who came at certain permitted times to assuage the sufferings of their friends and relatives within the gloomy walls of St. Pélagie.

6

It is a sight well worth,' says M. Jouy, the attention of a friendly observer of women-the salon of St. Pélagie, every Friday and Sunday. These are the only days, when persons confined here for delits correctionelles, are allowed to see their relations and their friends.

• One remark to which this chapter will furnish a commentary is, that the place is on these occasions more frequented by women than by men. I have often protracted my stay there, in order to catch the full length, as well as the detached features of the portraits.

Education, social conditions, establish differences between men, which are much less observed among women, and which those two sentiments that are a part of themselves, pity and love, cause entirely to disappear. With the unhappy persons whom they come to console, they are distinguished only in their dress-all seem then to possess in the same degree the delightful art of divining their tastes, of sustaining their courage, of managing their vanity in one word, of pouring into the wounds of the heart, the balm which their ingenious tenderness can alone administer. These moral cures are

much beyond physical cures, and the material attentions which they bestow not less profusely.

Among the females whom I observed on these occasions, a girl was pointed out to me, who for three years had travelled on foot twice a week from Nantene, and in all weathers, to bring her friend some little tarts made in the country, and of which he was extremely fond. He was scolding her for having come on so wet a day, and I heard with emotion all the little evasions that her heart suggested in order to lessen the merit of her devotion. "It did not rain when she set out: when it fell, she had the good fortune to meet a market woman, who had given her a lift in a covered cart, and set her down at the boulevard de Madelaine." While she was framing these little deceits, she was actually wiping off the wet from her clothes, and making a sign to an old man who had come with her, not to betray her.

Upon another bench, I saw a woman, still beautiful, though in the decline of life, who pressed her son to her bosom with a mingled expression of grief and tenderness which it is impossible to describe, Her husband was turning away his eyes with contempt and anger from a son for whom he had cause to blush, while the affectionate mother took advantage of the moment, to slip into the hands of the young man a little purse, which she drew from her breast.

I know not by what sign, I recognised the delicate tints of the same sentiment in the faces of all the women on this occasionmother, daughter, wife, friend, or mistress, I could distinguish them at a glance.

Maternal tenderness, filial piety, love, benevolence, and friendship are virtues of which the women that are to be seen at this place, would present innumerable examples; but there are also those of patriotism, courage, honour, (in the chivalrous acceptation of the word,) carried by women to the highest pitch of heroism. I will cite one only, with which my residence at St. Pélagie made me acquainted : the letter of Madame✶✶✶ will excuse any further explanation.

"You know how dear you are to me;-my cares have saved your life. But you are accused of being the primary agent in the matter which is now the subject of inquiry in the chamber of peers. Surrender then yourself prisoner,-you have no other means of vindicating yourself from a disgraceful imputation. Your judges are men, and your innocence as to the act of conspiracy is far from making me easy about your safety. You may lose your life; but, if I know you, you will not put it into competition with the loss of your honour, of mine, and that of our children."

The hopes of this noble and courageous woman were crowned. Her husband came back, and was tried. The suspicions that had fallen upon him, were irrevocably removed; and the sentence which deprives him at present of his liberty, leaves him, in the esteem and tender affection of his wife, an ample recompense for all that he has lost.' Tom. II. pp. 9-15.

St. Pélagie is also a prison for debtors. Among these, are twenty officers, (of whom seven are colonels,) marquisses, counts, and barons without number, ecclesiastics, men of letters, musicians, painters, water-carriers, and coal-men. It is very rare at St. Pélagie, to see a merchant. Some judicious remarks occur upon the impolicy and cruelty of imprisonment for debt, that stain of an enlightened age-a system twice accursed, in the ill that it inflicts on the prisoner, and the loss that is ultimately sustained by the creditor, who, in gratifying his vindictive feelings, often puts it for ever out of the power of his debtor to repay him. For a Frenchman, the utmost term of imprisonment is five years. With regard to foreigners, it is unlimited. A Major Swann of the United States, entered St. Pélagie at forty-five;-he is there still at sixty. Those who are without any other means of support, live upon the allowance deposited every month by the creditors. This sum is fixed at twenty francs. In the time of Henri IV., when this stipend was fixed, the basis of it was the silver mark, then worth twenty francs; it is now worth fifty-two; the nominal sum, however, still continues. This is a great grievance. The difference of the value of money, the ten francs per month which every prisoner must pay for his gaol allowance, will leave but little to an unfortunate workman, who has often a wife and several children to maintain.

As a specimen of Mr. Jouy's mode of writing, we shall present another extract, which will serve as a sample of the greater part of the two volumes.

It is worthy of remark, that History, under different names, and at the distance of two centuries, should produce exactly the same event; and it is honourable to the female character, that this event should be an example of conjugal heroism. An old chronicle thus records the devotion of the wife of Grotius.

The celebrated Grotius was delivered from gaol and from misery, by the skill and diligence of Marie de Regelsburg, his lawful wife. She had observed, on the occasion of a large trunk, which went backward and forward from Louvenstein to Gorcum, and from Gorcum to Louvenstein, that the gaolers had left off the constant habit of opening, of inspecting, and cramming their hands into it as they did at first. Upon which, she conceives the plan of causing her husband to get into the said trunk, after having very dexterously bored and pierced holes in its side, in order that he might put his head that way, and breath the air from without. Grotius lent a hand to this stratagem, put himself into the chest, and was carried, without being stopped, to Gorcum, to a friend's house, who received and concealed him for some time; then he went to Anvers, and passed along without any difficulty, with a carpenter's rule in his hands, and dressed like a mechanic in that business.