revive the painful recollections of the parricides Oudin, convicted at the assizes of Troyes in 1834.'

' 15th February, 1836.-Yesterday a court-martial was held on a subject which has acquired a deplorable celebrity by the rank of the parties and the heinousness of the crimes-adultery, incest, and an attempt at a double murder.

'Lieut.-Colonel R of the 46th regiment of the line, quartered in Paris, was informed by his servants that they had the strongest reason to suspect that his wife, Madame R- was habitually guilty of the last depravity with her own brother, M. G. They had satisfied themselves of the fact by gimblet-holes made in the door of the saloon, and they offered their master the same conviction by the same means. Lieut.-Colonel R- consented, and, to deceive the guilty parties, announced that he intended to go on the 25th January to a great ball, given by M. Thiers. On that evening he dined with his wife and brother-in-law, and after dinner left them together as if he was going to the ball-but he did not leave the house, and was soon convinced, by the mode offered by the servants, of his dishonour. He burst into the room, and with a case of pistols endeavoured to terminate the existence of the guilty couple, but in his extreme agitation only wounded them. The brother made his escape from the house, the wife fled to a place of concealment, and the Lieut.-Colonel proceeded to surrender himself to the colonel of the regiment. All the facts were proved in the fullest manner-the adultère incestueux, and the double tentative de meurtre-but on a consideration of the great provocation, the court acquitted the prisoner altogether.'

No one, we suppose, could object to the entire acquittal of Lieut.-Colonel Runder such circumstances; but Englishmen will wonder a little at the legislation which transfers from the ordinary criminal jurisdiction of the country to a court-martial a matter which involved no military question whatsoever.

The paper of the 16th February contains three cases of murder, and one of fratricide, all of peculiar character, and one of an attempt at murder, which, as being the shortest, we extract :

On the 12th February, a man belonging to the little town of St. Genis, near Lyons, in consequence of a violent dispute with his wife, attempted to strangle her, and left her for dead; but doubting afterwards whether he had completely accomplished his purpose, he returned to finish it if she should be still alive. The woman had so far recovered as to get to her own room; where, fearing another attack, she shut herself in with her children. The husband, unable to force the door, collected combustibles in different parts of the house and set fire to it, with the intention of either suffocating or burning to death both his wife and children-they however happily escaped through the window, and the monster, who endeavoured to make his escape, was taken.'

18th February.-A few days since there was found in the river Meuse, near Dinant, the body of a female apparently about thirty years of age-it seemed to have been several days in the water-but on examination it was ascertained that the death must have been occasioned, not by water, but by fire, several parts of the body exhibiting marks of having been exposed to violent combustion."'

This is the catalogue of crime for a single fortnight-in a single paper-and during a period when its columns were crowded with the debates on the change of ministry, and the proceedings of the Fieschi trial; and we have noticed those instances only which seemed distinguished by peculiar features of complicated immorality from the ordinary cases of crime.

Anxious as we are to conclude these odious and fearful details, we cannot omit a case, the report of which reaches us as we are writing these lines, and which belongs to the period of which we have been just treating-a case which, if it were not of the greatest notoriety, we might be almost suspected of having invented for the occasion.

In the last days of the same month of February, a priest of the name of Delacollonge was put upon his trial at Dijon on a double charge of robbery and murder-the murder was of Fanny Besson, a young milliner of Lyons, with whom he had long had an illicit intercourse, and who used to visit him at his parsonage. Her last visit had, it seems, excited some scandal-and he had, when questioned by the neighbours, denied that she was in the house, where, however, he had secreted her-but apprehending that, on a search, his profligacy and his falsehood must be detected, he murdered the poor girl, and cut the body into pieces for the purpose of more easily disposing of it in ponds and ditches-which he did. The robbery was, that, thinking he had better absent himself for a time, he broke open the poor-box of the parish church and extracted the money to defray the expenses of his journey. We shall extract two or three passages of this trial which we think will surprise our readers, even after all they have seen of French manners and French law.

A surgeon was giving evidence as to the appearance of the dexterous separation of the head from the body of the victim, which he thought must have been done with a knife, the cut was so clean.

Delacollonge (interrupting).-I beg your pardon-it was not with the knife that I operated the removal of the head. I placed the head on a block, and, supporting the corpse with my left hand, I struck with the right two blows on the neck with a bill-hook. But these strokes were not sufficient, and I continued to strike till at last the head came off quite easy in my hand, and I held it up by the hair.

The Attorney-General.-You commenced your dissection, then, by the head?

'Delacollonge.

"Delacollonge. To be sure; then I cut off the arms; then the legs; last of all, I extracted the entrails and intestines.

' Doctor.—I still say, that with this bill-hook I do not understand how the head could be cut so clean off!'-French Paper, March 7,

1836.

At this part of the proceeding the attorney-general proposed to adjourn to the next day, to which the jury strongly objected, because they said 'some of them wanted to attend the fair at Chalons the next day but one;' but on the judge and the counsel assuring them that they respectively would be short in their speeches next day, and that whether the jury should finish their deliberations or not would depend upon themselves, they consented to adjourn; and next evening at six o'clock-whether in a hurry to compromise their opinions, and so ensure their getting to the fair of Chalons, we cannot tell-they gave the following astonishing verdict :

As to the murder, that "the culprit was guilty of voluntary homicide, but without premeditation"—and as to the robbery, that "he was guilty, but with extenuating circumstances!"'

Without premeditation! He had concealed the girl for some days in his house, till he could find an occasion of making away with her! And the extenuating circumstances were that to the robbery was superadded sacrilege, and that sacrilegious robbery was committed to enable a murderer to make his escape!

The report goes on to state that the court sentenced the criminal to hard labour for life, and to be exposed in the pillory!

There was an incident in this trial which connects it in a more peculiar manner with our general inquiry. In the defence it was endeavoured to be shown that the culprit was a person of mild character and studious habits :—

'You say,' said the judge to one of the witnesses, that the accused employed himself' [during his confinement it would seem] 'in reading-what books did he particularly ask for?'

Witness.-Chiefly novels-and those rather loose—(un peu lestes).' The Judge. Were they loose or licentious? As you looked, you say, into the books, you can, I suppose, understand the difference?' Witness. I do not understand these matters; but I overheard a clergyman who visited him say—“ If you read such books I will not come to you again;" upon which the accused ordered a different class of books.

It afterwards appeared, by a list produced by Delacollonge himself, that the majority of the books he had procured-were modern plays and novels, such as Marion de L'Orme,' by VicTOR HUGO La Folie Espagnole,' by PIGAULTt Le Brun— 'L'Homme de la Nature,' by PAUL DE KOCK-and 'Les Scènes

de

de la Vie Privée,' and Les Scènes de la Vie de Province,' by M. DE BALSAC! A few other works, such as Thiers's History of the Revolution,' and the Memoirs of the Empress Josephine,' were probably the different class of books' ordered on the remonstrance of the clergyman.

We give none of these individual cases for more than they may be fairly worth-it is on their disproportionate number and common tendency that we rely; but we cannot but think that the occurrence of these last circumstances at this particular period of our long task is at least a curious coincidence.

We have now done with examples. If our readers should at first sight be inclined to think that we have produced too many, we beg leave to assure them that we have made a comparatively sparing use of the quantity of materials which we had at hand; and if we ourselves have any doubt, it is whether our selections ought not to have been still more copious.

The state of society in a great and extensive country is not to be estimated by a few insulated circumstances,-by half-a-dozen licentious works, or a dozen atrocious crimes :—our own literature has been polluted by bad books, and our own judicial annals are stained with frequent and atrocious guilt; and we regret to say that we have seen, of late, some symptoms amongst our recent English novelists of the influence of the Parisian press; but the evil never has been so great, nor so extensive, and, above all, never so encouraged by public acquiescence, much less approbation, as to justify any conclusion to the general disadvantage of the public morals of England. As to France, prior to the great overthrow, the same observation might, in principle, be made; although, from a variety of circumstances there was in the high places a greater laxity both of morals and manners, which the fatal example of Louis XV. encouraged, till even the virtues of Louis XVI. could not arrest it, and which went on increasing, till,-combining moral depravity with political disaffection,-it ended in the Revolution.

That the Revolution should have corrupted the generation which acted in and was educated under it was to have been expected; but we had, prior to the insurrection of July, 1830, believed that religion and morals were making-slow, we were aware, but we hoped-gradual and steady advances in the public mind. Nor do we yet altogether abandon that consolatory opinion; though undoubtedly the outburst of profligacy which has disgraced the last five or six years shows that the moral regeneration of France had been neither so extensive nor so stable as we had hoped, and convinces us that, if there be not some means found

found to stem the flood of impurity, it will in its progress sweep away whatever of decency and piety may still exist, and will carry the brutalized nation back to the days of Hebert and Gobel, of the Goddess of Reason, and the Spectacle de la Nature.* We say the flood, because that expresses the idea which we wish to convey-that it is not accidental or occasional circumstances that could alarm us, but the breadth, the depth, the strength, the impurity of the torrent. We should have thought little of one GEORGE SAND, but there are fifty-of one LELIA, but there are a hundred-of twenty adulteries, suicides, or murders, but there are a thousand; and all suddenly concentrated into a space of time so narrow, as never before we believe, in the annals of the world, was disgraced by even a tithe of such horrors.

We must beg leave to repeat that, in attributing a large share of this increase of profligacy to the July Revolution, we are not indulging in what may be called our own peculiar prejudices: the facts we have already quoted sufficiently disprove any such imputation-but we have other evidence-from a quarter which with some persons may go farther than any assertion of ours-to the same effect. The essential distinctions of that class of novels which we have been considering are, first, the extreme laxity of female morals which it exhibits; and, secondly, the extreme gross. ness with which such instances are detailed. Now, let us see what, in a laudatory article on M. de Balsac's works, the Revue des Deux Mondes, one of the most popular, we believe, of the French critical journals, says on this very point.

'M. de Balsac made a lucky hit towards establishing his popularity with women (sur la femme), by adapting his novels to their feelings at the moment when they were awakened and excited-after the emancipation of July-by the pictures and promises of the St. Simonists.'—

Our readers are aware that the doctrines of the St. Simonists go to relieve women from the obligations of personal continence and matrimonial fidelity.

There was evidently something of etiquette and reserve as connected with the condition of women, which has fallen and disappeared under the blows of the July Revolution. Nothing may have been substantially changed in their condition, but it has received a new development, and delicate matters have been more plainly spoken of (l'on a parlé plus crûment). St. Simonism-M. de Balsac-and the ILLUSTRIOUS WRITER under the title of George Sand, have all been, in their several ways, the instruments and organs of this change-a change, if not actually in female morals (mœurs), at least in the description

*A dramatic exhibition during the first Revolution, of which the reader can— or perhaps we should more truly say, cannot-imagine the depravity. Suffice it, as a specimen, to say the actors aud actresses were at no expense for a wardrobe. VOL. LVI. NO. CXI. and

K