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 he 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 intenor 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 iptroduced. His character is pleasingly sketched. A few days

A 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 ex, pense. 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.

• It is a sight well worth,' says M. Jouy, “ the attention of a friend ly 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 semiments 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 dividing 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

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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 be

i 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.

tray her.

• 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 inine, 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.

St. Pélagie is also a prison for debtors. Among these, áre 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 back: ward and forward from Louvenstein to Gorcum, and from Gorcum tó 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.

• In the mean while, his wife gave oat that her husband was very ill, and that she was tending him in prison, and kept up the farce till it was too late to overtake him. Then she began to tell the keepers, laughing at them," Look there, the bird has flown from his cage." Great hubbub among the judges, who were at first for proceeding criminally against her ;-many were for keeping her in prison for ever in the place of her husband, but, by the plurality of voices, this noble heroine was acquitted, and she was praised by the whole world.

Can we not imagine that we are reading the story of Madame de Lavalette? But it is with less interest; for, in the case of Grotius, it was merely an abridgement of the term of his imprisonment, whereas the scaffold of M. de Lavalette was ready. If these two adventures resemble each other in the main, how much do they vary in their results! When Madame de Lavalette saw her husband again, the effort of her courage had destroyed her reason, and her estranged intellect did not even permit her the consolation of recognising the object of her heroic devotion.

A part of the history of Europe is buried in its prisons. The work is a desideratum,-it would be highly interestingThe reigns of Louis XIII., Louis XIV.; Louis XV., are almost to be traced entire in the annals of the Bastile.

• Henri IV. was content with depositing the public treasure there. In 1790, a complete copy of the Encyclopædia, which had been put into confinement about twenty-five years before, was found in the dungeons of the Bastile.

• The duke de Guise became master of Paris in 1558, took possession of the Bastile, and named Bussy-le-Clerc governor of that state prison : this Bussy, procureur to the parliament, himself conducted to the Bastile, all the members of that illustrious body, which refused to release the French, in favor of Guise, from their oath of allegiance to Henry III. Presidents and counsellors were put upon bread and water. One week of this discipline exhausted their constancy and their fidelity.

• It is well known, that there were at Bicêtre, before the Revo. lution, four dark dungeons, infectious, damp, six feet long, and four feet broad, true caverns of death, which the air penetrated so slowly through oblique openings, that the light of torches were extinguished. Sixty

pounds weight of fetters were put on every wretch that they let down into these living sepulchres. Upon his accession to the administration, M. Necker set at liberty the only prisoner who had ever survived this dreadful punishment two years. The minister was present when he was liberated. As he regained the surface of the earth, he tottered like a drunken man at every step; and M. Necker expressed his suspicion that it was actually the case with this unhappy man. “ Alas, Sir,” exclaimed he, “ for two years I have drunk nothing but fetid water ; it is the fresh air that intoxicates me.”

The pacific Cardinal de Fleury, in the single matter of the Bull Unigenitus, signed 30,000 !ettres de cachet.

• How many dishonourable fathers who had themselves led the