Various

“ At a little distance, the appearance is exceedingly brilliant, for there is no other light among the populace to diminish its lustre, and the whole scene is singularly picturesque. The resplendent light issuing from the star strikes powerfully upon the countenances of the principal actors, while those more remote receive only a faint and subdued gleam. ”

“ At this period, the prison of Bicêtre, which is only strong from the strict guard kept up there, could contain twelve hundred prisoners; but they were piled on each other, and the conduct of the jailors in no way assuaged the inconvenience of the place.
If any man arrived from the country well clad, who, condemned for a first offence, was not as yet initiated into the customs and usages of prisons, in a twinkling he was stripped of his clothes, which were sold in his presence to the highest bidder. ”

“ The Barbary Jews are a very fine people; but the handsomest Jews are said to be those of Mesopotamia. That province may also boast of an Arab chief who bears the name of the Patriarch Job, is rich in sheep, and camels, and oxen, and asses, abounds in hospitality, and believes that he descends from him; he is also famed for his justice. The Jews at Constantinople, forty thousand in number, and in the parts of European Turkey on and near the Mediterranean, speak Spanish, and appear to descend from Israelites driven from Spain by persecution. ”

“ Peters had put off his usual attire, which was that of ship-caulker, or sail-maker, and had on a hairy cap, and a long red shirt, closed at the breast with a silver pin, fire-arms in his belt, and a pair of thick large, fisherman's boots, which reach the top of the thigh, or may be folded down beneath the knee.
"A-hoy! a-hoy!" cried he, at the door, striking the ground with the butt end of his carbine! "down with the hammocks, down with the hammocks! We will sleep some other day. The Squirrel has made signals for a landing this evening, and we must see what she has in her, muslin or tobacco. ”

“ IMMORTALITY.
Napoleon being in the gallery of the Louvre one day, attended by Baron Denon, turned round suddenly from a fine picture, which he had viewed for some time in silence, and said to him, "That is a noble picture, Denon."—"Immortal," was Denon's reply. "How long," inquired Napoleon, "will this picture last?" Denon answered, that, "with care and in a proper situation, it might last, perhaps, five hundred years."—"And how long," said Napoleon, "will a statue last?"—"Perhaps," replied Denon, "five thousand years."—"And this," returned Napoleon, sharply, "this you call immortality!" ”

“ The same author observes, that "the death of Wolsey would make a fine moral picture, if the hand of any master could give the pallid features of the dying statesman, that chagrin, that remorse, those pangs of anguish, which, in the last bitter moments of his life, possessed him. The point might be taken when the monks are administering the comforts of religion, which the despairing prelate cannot feel. ”

“ The ancient history of Naples is involved in much obscurity. According to some, says Vasi, Falerna, one of the Argonauts, founded it about 1,300 years before the Christian era; according to others, Parthenope, one of the Syrens, celebrated by Homer in his "Odyssey," being shipwrecked on this coast, landed here, and built a town, to which she gave her name; others attribute its foundation to Hercules, some to Eneas, and others to Ulysses. These are mere freaks of fiction and fable; and it is more probable that Naples was founded by some Greek colonies ”

“ Infidelity is supposed to have made more progress amongst them than amongst the German Jews in Holland. The Italian Jews are chiefly at Leghorn and Genoa; and there are four thousand of them at Rome. In speaking of the religion of the Jews, it is not necessary to particularize those who assumed the mask of Christianity under terror of the Inquisition, although much has been said of their wealth and numbers, and of the high offices they have filled in Spain, and especially in Portugal. ”

“ Thus sunk into the grave a man, who was a victim to tyranny, but to a tyranny which he had himself formed; that he was a person far enlightened beyond the period in which he lived no one can presume to doubt. ”

“ He next joins a player of Punch, to whose wife he enacts Romeo with better grace, and during one of the representations, the married people break each others heads, and Vidocq runs off during the affray. He then becomes assistant to a quack doctor, and the favoured swain of an actress; gets into the Bourbon regiment, where he is nicknamed Reckless, and kills two men, and fights fifteen duels in six months. His other exploits are as a corporal of grenadiers, of course, a deserter, and a prisoner of the revolution. He then marries, but does not reform. ”

“ Nevertheless, all men are more or less misanthropes, or they affect to be so; for only skim off the bile of a true critic, or the minds of the hundred thousand who read newspapers, and look first for the bankrupts and deaths. Sugar and wormwood and wormwood and sugar are the standing dishes, but as we read the other day, "there is a certain hankering for the gloomy side of nature, whence the trials and convictions of vice become so much more attractive than the brightest successes [pg 426] of virtue." ”

“ With such precautions, a jailor might depend on the safe keeping of his charge, but yet we overcame it all.
I was in a cell on the second floor with Duhamel. For six francs, a prisoner, who was also a turnkey, procured us two files, a ripping chisel, and two turnscrews. We had pewter spoons, and our jailor was probably ignorant of the use which prisoners could make of them. I knew the dungeon key; it was the counterpart of all the others on the same story; and I cut a model of it from a large carrot; then I made a mould with crumb of bread and potatoes. ”

“ The park of Blenheim, besides the interest which attaches to it from the circumstance of its having been the residence of the early kings of England, and the scene of "Rosamond's" life, has in more modern times acquired additional interest from having been bestowed by the country upon the Duke of Marlborough, in testimony of the gratitude of the nation for the brilliant services he had rendered his country, particularly at the battle of Blenheim. ”

“ There are at Salonica thirty synagogues, and about twenty-five thousand professed Jews; and a body of Israelites have been lately discovered there, who, really adhering to the faith of their fathers, have externally embraced Mahomedanism. ”

“ As long as they remained at Bicêtre, by burying themselves, as we may say, in their straw, they could defy the rigour of the weather; but at the departure of the chain, when they had no other covering than the frock and trousers made of packing cloth, they often sunk exhausted and frozen before they reached the first resting place.
[As we have said, the present is but a fourth portion of Vidocq's exploits; and if the remaining three are of equal interest, [pg 431] the work will be one of the most extraordinary of our times. ”

“ Strabo speaks of these Greek colonies, whence the city derives its origin.
The city of Naples was formerly surrounded by very high walls, about 22 miles in circumference; but on its enlargement, neither walls nor gates were erected. It may be, however, defended by three strong castles.
Naples is divided into twelve quarters, or departments, and contains about 450,000 inhabitants. It is consequently the most populous city in Europe, except London and Paris. The streets are neither broad nor regular, and are paved with broad slabs of hard stone, resembling the lava of Vesuvius. ”

“ In truth, little appears to be known of the state of the Jews during some hundreds of years after the destruction of Jerusalem. The first body of learned Jews which drew attention after that disastrous event was that settled in Spain; and from it all Jewish learning descends. As in accomplishment of the prophecy, the Jew is found over the whole surface of the globe; he has been long established in China, which abhors the foreigner ”

“ Man marks the earth with ruin.
LEICESTER ABBEY.—DEATH OF CARDINAL WOLSEY.
(For the Mirror.)
Few periods of English history are more pregnant with events, or more interesting to the antiquary, and general reader, than that which comprised the fortunes of Wolsey. The eventful life of the Cardinal, checkered as it was by the vicissitudes of fortune, his sudden elevation, and finally his more sudden fall and death, display an appalling picture of "the instability of human affairs." ”

“ Nevertheless, Naples is one of the most beautiful and most delightful cities on the habitable globe. Nothing can possibly be imagined more unique than its coup-d'oeil, on whatever side the city is viewed.
Naples is situated towards the south and east on the declivity of a long range of hills, and encircling a gulf of 16 miles in breadth, and as many in length, which forms a basin, called Crater by the Neapolitans. The city appears to crown this superb basin. One part rises towards the west in the form of an amphitheatre, on the hills of Pausilippo, St. ”

“ There is his cover, he cannot be long. When he enters, I will make you a sign; but if you are alone, I doubt if you can seize him, as he is armed, and resolved to defend himself."—"I have my gendarmes on the staircase," answered he, "and if he escapes—"—"Take care how you place them then," said I with affected haste. "If Vidocq should see them he would mistrust some plot, and then farewell to the bird."—"But where shall I place them?"—"Oh, why in this closet—mind, [pg 428] no noise, that would spoil all; and I have more desire than yourself that he should not suspect anything." ”

“ At the moment of entering a farm with six of his comrades, he thrust his left hand through an opening in the shutter to lift the latch, but when he was drawing it back, he found that his wrist had been caught in a slip knot. Awakened by the noise, the inhabitants of the farm had laid this snare, although too weak to go out against a band of robbers which report had magnified as to numbers. ”

“ They opened an arm-chest, and every man took out a carbine or blunderbuss, a brace of pistols, and a cutlass or boarding pike, and we set out, after having drunk so many glasses of brandy and arrack that the bottles were empty. ”

“ In almost every Dutch town, and in every considerable village, the following custom prevails:—At a little after two o'clock in the morning of Christmas-day, a number of young men assemble in the market-place, and sing some verses suited to the occasion. One of the young men bears an artificial star, which is fixed to a pole, and elevated above the heads of the people ”

“ Mandeé, about two leagues from Paris, where he employs from forty to fifty persons, principally, it is asserted, liberated convicts, who having passed through the term of their sentence, are cast upon society without home, shelter, or character, and would be compelled to resort to dishonest practices did not this asylum offer them its protection and afford them opportunity of earning an honest living by industrious labour. ”

“ I have seen, in the depth of winter, these poor devils, having been deprived of their property in this way, remain in the court in their shirts until some one threw them some rags to cover their nakedness. ”

“ The Editor of the "Autobiography" has, however, reprinted Vaux's memoirs in his series; their style is very superior to that of Vidocq's, (which is a translation) and as scores of worse books are printed annually, we rejoice at their rescue from oblivion. ”

“ One of his flights of oratory, not in the best taste, is related on Hume's authority. "After a solemn pause, Mr. Whitfield thus addresses his audience:—'The attendant angel is just about to leave the threshold, and ascend to heaven; and shall he ascend and not bear with him the news of one sinner, among all the multitude, reclaimed from the error of his ways!' To give the greater effect to this exclamation, he stamped with his foot, lifted up his hands and eyes to heaven, and cried aloud, 'Stop, Gabriel! ”

“ But we can follow him no further, except to add that his other comrades in Vol. I, are gipsies, smugglers, players, [pg 427] galley-slaves, drovers, Dutch sailors, and highwaymen.
We must, therefore, confine ourselves to a few detached extracts from the most interesting portion of the volume. At Lille, Vidocq meets with a chere amie, Francine; he suspects her fidelity, thrashes his rival, gets imprisoned, and is betrayed as an accomplice in a forgery. ”

“ A second cargo arrived with the same success; but as we were landing the third, some reports of fire-arms announced that our outposts were attacked. "There is the beginning of the ball," said Peters, calmly; "I must go and see who will dance;" and taking up his carbine, he joined the outposts, which had by this time joined each other. The firing became rapid, and we had two men killed, and others slightly wounded. At the fire of the revenue officers, we soon found that they exceeded us in number ”

“ Nothing used to make him swear more than the eternal question, "What may I eat? Pray, Sir Richard, may I eat a muffin?"—"Yes, Madam, the best thing you can take."—"O dear! I am glad of that. But, Sir Richard, [pg 432] you told me the other day that it was the worst thing I could eat!"—"What would be proper for me to eat to-day?" says another lady.—"Boiled turnips."—"Boiled turnips! you forget, Sir Richard, I told you I could not bear boiled turnips."—"Then, Madam, you must have a—vitiated appetite." ”

“ It may be here observed, that all the Israelites hitherto discovered appear to be descendants of those who held the kingdom of Judah.
The Jews in Great Britain and Ireland are not supposed to be more than from ten to twelve thousand, very many of whom are foreigners, and migratory.—Quarterly Rev. ”

“ I was told that most probably she would unload her cargo in some other part of the coast, where the owners had numerous agents.
[Vidocq returns to Lille, where he is taken by two gendarmes, and concerts the following stratagem for escape:—]
This escape, however, was not so very easy a matter as may be surmised, when I say that our dungeons, seven feet square, had walls six feet thick, strengthened [pg 430] with planking crossed and rivetted with iron; a window, two feet by one, closed with three iron gratings placed one after the other, and the door cased with wrought iron. ”