terrible fellowship with guilt; or that, while the fearful page unfolds itself, we reflect unconsciously how trivial and fortuitous were the circumstances which preserved our habits and character from the evil bent! As for us, we listen to such explanations; and still, whenever the question occurs, we answer briefly, and in a kind of aweIt is our nature!

The history of the penal laws of France is exceedingly curious, and even amusing. The very gravest crimes, under the feudal régime, were sometimes punished by pecuniary fines; and when the communes came to legislate for themselves, they carried the system to a ludicrous pitch of extravagance.

Even after feudality began to be broken up by the liberation of the serfs and the formation of communes, its spirit continued to exist in the new institutions to which the change gave birth. A commune, in fact, was a little feudal kingdom in itself, in which all the gradations of vassalage were visible.

The mode of preserving order in the mass of independent confréries, animated by different, and often jarring interests, was by the infliction of fines, graduated with the most singular minuteness, and embracing every possible variety of offence. These regulations were frequently contained in the charters of the towns, although sometimes the towns had the right of forming their own scale. The amount, however, was always divided between the king and the commune. It was in vain for an offender to say that if he had given a blow he had received one; for this was only striking a balance in the private account. The fines varied in the different provinces; but the following tarif will give a tolerably correct idea of the whole.

An insulting expression

Taking hold of a person by the throat with one hand

with two hands

0 14

0 0

Throwing a stone, and hitting

Throwing slops from the window upon a town-counsellor 10 0

0

It was hardly possible to commit the above, or similar offences, without detection; for a crowd of officers, called sergeants, had no other means of existence than that of playing the spy. If the prisoner lost his temper and exclaimed against the decision of the mayor, his house was pulled down, or the owner was permitted to redeem it at its value.

A buyer who accused a shopkeeper of dishonesty in charging too much for his wares, was obliged, on the following Sunday, to take himself by the nose before the whole town, and confess that he had lied.

A person committing a petty theft in a garden or field, if too poor to pay a fine, gave up one of his teeth in lieu thereof. Every family in the town was obliged to be present at an execution; and the bourgeois cast lots to determine which of them should officiate as hangman.

Raising a false alarm of theft, fire, &c., whether intentionally or not, was punished by a fine; and a person who looked on at the pursuit of a fugitive offender without assisting, was prosecuted as an accomplice.

The punishment of blasphemous swearing differed greatly in the course of the fourteenth century. Philippe-Auguste condemned offenders to pay four sous to the poor, and in default, to be ducked in the river, whether in summer or winter. Saint Louis, in lieu of the ducking, exposed them on a scaffold for one hour, and then shut them up in prison to fast for eight days on bread and water. Children under fourteen years of age were simply scourged in public. Philippe-le-Hardi continued these regulations; but Philippede-Valois (he who lost the battle of Crécy) found them too lenient. With him, the pillory for nine hours, with mud and filth at the discretion of the by-standers, was the punishment for the first offence; for the second, the upper lip of the swearer was cloven; for the third, the lower lip was cloven also, so as to give the mouth the appearance of a cross; for the fourth, the upper lip was cut off; for the fifth, the lower lip was cut off; and for the sixth, the blaspheming tongue was cut out.

In the following century, we find a curious difference in the treatment of the sexes by the police laws. If a man was so unpolite as to call a woman an ugly slut, he got off with a fine of five sous; but if a woman insulted a man with the corresponding epithet, no number of sous could make her peace. On the following Sunday she was compelled to march before all the people, carrying a stone of fifty pounds weight under her arm. The men, alas! were always the lawmakers.

The municipal administration of Paris was for a long time in the hands of the provost of the merchants, in conjunction with the sheriffs; and their sittings were held in different places, termed the "parlouers aux bourgeois." In 1532, however, they began to meet habitually in a house. which they had purchased in the Place de Grève, and here

at length the Hôtel de Ville was built-the Mansion-House of Paris. A view of a portion of this edifice, with the Pont d'Arcole leading to the Cité, will be found on the adjoining page.

HOTEL DE VILLE AND THE PONT D'ARCOLE.

The Prisons for evil-doers, to pursue the subject, even those for the untried, formed in themselves fearful punishments. The ancient tower of the Louvre, till the time of Francis I, was the privileged place of durance for the nobility; and its successor, the Bastile Saint-Antoine, was distinguished by the iron cage which Louis XI constructed for the reception of the Bishop of Verdun. But the prison of the Conciergerie, in the Palace of the Cité, was still more famous; and the concierge himself enjoyed the title and the power of bailli, judge, or seneschal of the palace. Besides these, the provost of the merchants had his own prison: the bishop had two-one for laymen, and one for ecclesiastics; and every abbey and monastery which possessed the privilege of haute justice, had theirs.

It is supposed, that in the early part of the fourteenth century there were about a hundred thousand seigneurial prisons in France, most of which were dug under ground. These subterranean dens continued in fashion for nearly three centuries after, till the time of Charles IX, when an edict of the States at Orléans prohibited the construction of any prison of haute justice lower than the ground-floor. After this reform they were sometimes placed in the first story of the donjon; and that part of the château being generally in the middle of the court (as we see to-day at Vincennes), they conferred an air of feudal sovereignty upon the whole edifice. The donjon may be described as