criminals. The lodging-houses in which or an unexpected plunder has put them in funds. this vile population dwells, are intermixed Followed unceasingly by the dread of being diswith numerous eating-houses, and brandy covered and arrested by the police, they hasten and smoking shops of the most obscene description.

violent excitement. Play is at once the business to the gaming-table to drown their fears in its of their lives and their most cherished pleasure; debauchery and gluttony follow as subordinates. The most striking characteristic of the This cruel passion accompanies and domineers lodging-houses is an excess of uncleanliness, over them even in the prison, and leads to exwhich renders them so many centres of infection. cesses which approach insanity. There are It is only the most select which have beds; the instances of prisoners, who, after having lost in greater part contain merely truckle bedsteads, one instant the produce of an entire week's disgustingly dirty. The rooms open into pas- labour, have not feared to glut their passion by sages which have neither light nor air; the staking in advance the bread which is to supleaden sinks and latrines on each floor exhale a port them for the next month, or even for a suffocating stench; their leakage extends from longer period; nor are there wanting beings so the garret to the ground floor, and renders the remorseless as to lie in wait during the distribustairs, which are covered with a humid mud, tion of the food, and snatch from their debtors almost impassable. The court-yard of these the bread which is necessary to their very exhouses is only a few feet square; and the windows of the densely-crowded rooms look into this; but many of the smaller chambers have no other opening than the door which leads to the stairs. The windows are covered with oiled paper instead of glass; and in many houses the whole of the inmates sleep on heaps of rags, collected in the streets, and kept in one of the lower rooms, to be given out to the lodgers as they enter. I enlarge upon these details, because the very harshness of the picture will throw a strong light on the habits of the dangerous class.'

istence.

The medical attendants in the Central House of Mont Saint-Michel remarked a convict who played with so unconquerable an ardour, that when he was in the infirmary, and in the extremity of disease, he abandoned to the chance of the die the broth or wine absolutely neces sary to restore his strength. This man, in the end, died of actual inanition.'

The 'medical attendants,' we presume, were placed there for some other purpose than merely to 'remark the ardour' of such a patient !

'Gamblers'—for it is with this class of criminals that our author commences are, from the very nature of their pursuits, subject to such We believe there is no portion of their sudden vicissitudes of fortune, and are driven on social system on which our Gallic neighby such a reckless ardour, that they are not only bours more pride themselves than on their looked upon by the police as dangerous persons, code of erotic laws; and it is with somebut become objects of dread to all the well-dis- what of a flourish of trumpets-a pauloposed. Of all our evil propensities, the love of

play is the most tyrannical, devouring, and majora-canamus sort of a tone—that M. Frétenacious; and there are no excesses to which gier enters upon the subject :

it does not lead. Among the professed gamblers there are many, especially of the lower and of "This vice," he exclaims, "begotten by one the educated but necessitous classes, who are of the passions the most imperious in man, and solely occupied by the craving appetite for play, to which the progress of civilisation has in vain the activity of which absorbs in them all other attempted to oppose any efficacious barrier, exwants. They retrench as much as possible ercises more especially its influence in mighty their food and clothing, to furnish the means of cities. It reigns-such is the recital of travelindulging this deadly passion. They frequent lers, such is the testimony of writers the most the lowest lodging-houses; and whilst they risk accredited-over the entire surface of the at the gaming-table every franc they possess, it globe!'

is with regret that they part with two or three

sous to pay for a bed of rotten straw, or of rags In Paris, prostitution exists under two covered with mud. Such is their destiny, day distinct forms: it is public, and it is clanafter day; and it brings them to the level of the destine; the inscription of names in the robbers and cut-throats who inhabit the same

dens. It is this community of abode, this close register of the police being the line of sepaapproach to criminals of the worst description. ration. Convinced of the necessity of the which so powerfully seconds the pernicious evil, the municipal authorities have eninfluences of the passion that controls them. deavoured to render it obedient to such Deprived by the cast of the die of their last crown, laws as should restrain its excesses-to and urged to desperation, they throw them- organize it, as far as its nature will perselves into the career of crime in the train of the mit. During the last five-and-twenty

robbers with whom they dwell. This extremity of guilt is sooner or later the fate of almost years, and more especially of late, the every gamester. These same men, who, when police have,' we are told, evinced great neither fraud nor luck has befriended them, can wisdom and firmness in the ameliorations submit to every privation, give way to the wild- they have introduced into this division of est extravagance when the chance of the cards the community; and Paris has become

distinguished among all the capitals of civilized nations, as the one in which public order, morals, and health, are the best guaranteed against the influence of this

vice.'

counsel of some early friend who is herself devoted to vice. In all these cases the police proceed with extreme caution. The cause of morality being the one object they have in view, it is by no means unusual for them to refuse the In England prostitution is tolerated, in ing, and the girl is not suffering under disease. inscription, if they see any remains of good feelFrance it is sanctioned: advantages and They do more. To preserve her from the dandisadvantages result probably from both ger of clandestine prostitution, and to do away systems; but neither the pages of our au- with any pretext for remaining at Paris, they thor, nor the voluminous treatise of his give her a passport and funds to enable her to great authority, M. Parent-Duchâtelet, return home. Even in those cases in which the have convinced us that the cause of virtue police perceive that this course cannot be adoptis promoted by legalizing vice. This at inscribe the name: a communication is addressed ed, they do not, in the first instance, definitively least is certain, that the proud supremacy to the mayor of the place in which the girl was of moral discipline, which these two politi- born, requiring him to furnish, free of expense, cal economists claim for Paris, exists only a certificate of her birth; and although the obin part clandestine prostitution has re-ject for which it is demanded is not expressed, sisted every attempt to bring it under conthe researches which the local authorities are trol; nor can it ever be so brought, with the girl where she is, and the danger in which obliged to make suffice to apprise the friends of out an undue and most dangerous infringe- she is placed. It rests with them to negotiate ment of the liberty of the subject. The her return either by the intervention of the obvious, the admitted result of this imper-mayor, or by a direct application to the police. fect, this half submission to the law is, that the clandestine and ex-legal division of the class is more depraved and more dangerous than where there is no such separation; and that this is the case the pages of our author abundantly prove.

The two classes are so distinct, that he has deemed it necessary to treat of each separately:

"The inscription has for its object to prove the individuality of the woman who surrenders herself to an immoral life; and thus to give the inspectors of the police the means of arresting her if guilty of disorderly conduct or crime. The registered female, aware that she is thus subjected to a constant surveillance, abandons herself less willingly to those excesses which are almost inseparable from her vocation; and has no hope, if guilty of crime, of escaping from the pursuit of justice. The inscription declares the fact of prostitution; but it does not grant her the authority to prostitute herself, as is commonly supposed to be the case.

"If the girl who presents herself and demands her inscription, or who is brought by the police, is of age, and appears not utterly hardened in vice, the executive employs all its efforts to induce her to return into the bosom of her family. The interrogation which she undergoes as to her previous conduct enables them to judge whether anger or despair has driven her to take this step; nor is her name inscribed until, after a mature investigation, they are convinced that there is no hope of reconciling her to her family. Many of those who apply for inscription are from the provinces. Ensnared by a transitory attachment, they quit their native place; are brought to Paris by the seducer, speedily abandoned by him, and compelled by actual want to add their names to the registry of infamy: or, willing to hide a first fault, they separate themselves from their family and seek concealment in the capital, and to do this they are frequently led by the

It is only when this document is transmitted without any accompanying remark that the provisional inscription becomes final.

A different line of conduct is adopted in the case of a minor. If from the country, the local magistrates are requested to ascertain the situation of her parents, and what steps they are willing to take to secure her return to them. During the period of this negotiation, she is put in separate confinement in the prison of St. Lazarus. If, which is very frequently the case, she is not claimed by her relations, the registration takes place. When the parents reside in Paris, the same solicitude is shown. They are brought before the prefect of police, and urged to pardon their child. Sometimes the efforts of the civil authorities are successful; but these reconciliations are seldom durable. The girl is again guilty, and again arrested: her relations break off all connection with her, and it becomes necessary to add her name to the list.

Each girl, when she is registered, is required to sign, either with her name or her mark, a formal printed declaration, by which she engages to submit herself to the sanatory regulations, and to the prescribed system of surveillance connected with them. This is an important document: it constitutes a sort of legal right in the police to inflict, as they are perpetually compelled to do, the slighter kinds of punishment on these unfortunate women, without control and without appeal. It is found, also, to have a strong moral effect upon the girls themselves; they feel that by thus pledging themselves they have entered into a kind of contract with the police: this tends to render them obedient, and to restrain their conduct within some bounds of propriety.'

Every trade and every occupation affords its contingent to this class; and, as with us, the most productive of all are the manufactories and the workshops. Parent

Duchâtelet-the Newton of harlotry-in The aristocracy of the profession, the his elaborate work, De la Prostitution de kept mistresses, have nearly all of them la Ville de Paris,'* enumerates the in- their favoured lovers, whom our author stances in which near relations have simul-warns us by no means to confound with taneously presented themselves for regis- their ostensible protectors: many of these tration. Out of 5183 registrations, 164 favourites occupy an elevated position in cases have occurred of two sisters present-society-general officers-men of lettersing themselves at the same time, 4 instances financiers-noblemen.' The next rank— of three sisters, 3 instances of four; and the higher class of street-walkers-who the still more fearful spectacle of a mother live free from personal restraint, exercise and her daughter presenting themselves to- their trade during the day, and devote their gether has occurred no less than sixteen nights to the society of their lovers, whom times!! by preference they choose from among the of these grand divisions is consecrated to a philosophic analysis of the veteran rank of the profession. Here, in fourteen sections, we have given to us their nomenclature-the gradual purifications in the French language on this important subject during a long succession of ages—the exact year, 1796, in which their present decorous appellation was conceded to then-their domestic pursuits, studies, and amusements-their opinion of themselves, a nice point-their special and individual affairs of the heart the discomfort to their establishments when these extend to more than two cherished objects at oncetheir tournure d'esprit'—their maternal solicitude;

This is a work d'une grande célébrité in France. We marvel not that it should be so; for never was there a book more radically and essentially French. The subject well deserves the attention of the philanthropist and the statesman: it is the treatment of it--the blending together philosophic gravity and trivial minuteness-the needless abomination of detail-which makes the English reader fling it from him with wonder and disgust. The author had prepared himself for his revolting task by a long familiarity with kindred subjects: the death-spreading industry of Montfaucon the obstructed sinks and sewers of Paris--had been the objects of his care, before he busied himself with these darker impurities. To them he devoted almost exclusively the last eight years of his life. His zeal and energy in the pursuit were unceasing; and among the mass of facts which he has collected and brought into system many are of high importance and utility. But from long dwelling upon one favourite and engrossing subject, his eye lost by degrees the faculty of correct perspective: things absolutely unimportant, things altogether base and trivial, became from proximity magnified into objects of philosophic grandeur. What moral or statistical advantage, for example, can result from ascertaining with mathematical accuracy and reducing into decimal fractions the proportionate ratios of the eyes, grey, brown, blue, red, and black, of every street-walker in Paris? What practical utility in mastering the still more difficult problem of the colour of their eyebrows? There may be some interest in knowing exactly the height of the Venus de Medicis, and of the Pucelle d'Orléans;-but to ascertain, within the fraction of an inch, the altitudes, in an ascending series, of TWELVE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR Parisian pros-pedient to be accurate in our references.) titutes is a department of science, a species of philosophy, which we are convinced no human being but a Frenchman would ever have thought of cultivating.

and, to complete the interesting picture, their calm secession from the toils of life-their provincial retirements-their gradually extending respectability -their charitable cares-their rural piety-their eager participation in the holiest ceremonials of the church-the whole wound up with what should have been its commencement, had there not existed, as we are expressly told, insurmountable difficulties' in so doing-the whole wound up with

As an author, Parent-Duchâtelet's merits are considerable. His language is correct, clear, and even eloquent; but the measureless attachment which he feels towards his subject betrays him sometimes into an energy of phrase singularly ludicrous. Subjects of loathsome disquisition, needless and frivolous impurities, are thus pompously ushered in: 'Je consacre un chapitre,' Cette opinion étant d'un poids immense,'' J'ai puisé largement à cette source précieuse,'--' Cet inestimable document;'-and on one occasion, when dilating on a subject supereminently revolting and disgraceful, filled with gratitude towards his co-explorers, he exclaims, 'Ils l'ont étudiée pour moi, et m'ont donné à ce sujet des précieux renseignemens!!

'DEFINITION d'une Dame de Maison.'

The accuracy of every statement contained in this volume is repeatedly insisted upon by M. Frégier, and the work carries within itself the strongest evidence of truth. There are, nevertheless, some very startling assertions in it. We scarcely know which of the three following is the most incredible:

1st. That one of the physicians of Paris, observing the uniform increase of fat which courtezans acquire from the use of mercury, suggested the expediency of subjecting all animals intended for the food of man to a like course of treatment!! (Page 116 of the Brussels edition of 1836-we deem it ex

2d. That in one of the forty-eight quarters of Paris, that of l'Ile Saint Louis, in a population of 7500, not one single prostitute is to be found!!! (Page 327.)

3d. That one woman of a superior grade-but we will quote the original words, to prevent the possibility of error-assurait la santé de tous ses cliens. Pour cela elle ne recevait que des hommes mariés que tous se connaissaient; on n'était admis chez elle que sur la présentation de quelques habitués, et avec l'assentiment de tous les autres au nombre de quarante à cinquante'!!!! (Page 81.)

Parent-Duchâtelet was a skilful and valuable public servant. We believe, also, that he was a virtuous man; and the disgust with which we cast aside the book does not extend to its author. Nor would we be unjust to the work itself. As it exists, it

would be unendurable in this country; but if divested of all its unnecessary grossness, all its trivial details, we should be glad to see, in an English dress, the solid information which it contains. We warn our readers against supposing that they will find what we speak of in a late trumpery publication of

In elaborate correctness of arrangement the work is a master-piece: each of its grander divisions is subdivided into numerous subordinate sections, every one of which has its duplex enunciation, the one concise, the other full and comprehensive. One | the Edinburgh press.

students of law and medicine, and the ju- men than the disdain which the higher ranks venile attorneys, the intelligence and wit among them express for those of an inferior of these young men rendering them espe- grade, the one grand criterion of their recially attractive.' These women never ex-lative dignity being the price at which they act any payment from their favourites; on accord their favours. Should any individual the contrary, they lavish their money upon forget herself so far as to lower her terms, them; and the number of young men in she is exposed to the anger and revilings of Paris who degrade themselves by being her fellows: this is an offence which, in their thus supported is considerable. This total opinion, admits of no excuse. The contempt absence of mercenary views,' says our of the superior class naturally draws down author, is universal through all the grada- upon it the vindictive hatred of the other; and tions of prostitution, even to the very low- when members of the two meet, as they perTowards their lovers, the disinterest-petually do in the prison or the hospital, hoth edness of these abandoned women is un- reduced to the same hard fare and the same mixed and perfect.' The next class in the coarse dress, the inferior fails not to take a descending scale are perhaps the least cor- bitter revenge. The mistresses of the houses rupted and vicious of the whole: these of Tolerance have in their pay agents in the nearly all of them exercise some indus- different hospitals, who form acquaintance trious trade, in addition to their regular with the handsomest of their fellow-patients; profession : : many are economists, and in- and, on their report, the Dame de Maison envest their money in the savings-banks: not ters into a treaty with the girls thus selected, a few of them in the capital thus accumu- and makes them a present of clothes, and a lated find ultimately the means of emanci-weekly allowance of four or five francs dupating themselves, and set up in some de- ring the remainder of their stay in the hospital, cent business. The lovers chiefly sought the agent herself receiving a much higher reafter by this class are shopmen, journey-muneration. These selections chiefly take men hair-dressers, and journeymen tailors, the latter especially. In this rank there are many women whose degradation has sprung from poverty, and not from any propensity to vice. The lowest class is that which most demands the strict attention of the police; for with them are constantly associated men of the vilest and most dangerous character, their lovers or their souteneurs, who are for the most part liberated convicts. The attachment of these women for their favourites knows no bounds: the vilest treatment at their hands, blows, even wounds, will not shake it. The duty of the souteneur is to warn his mistress of the approach of the police, when she is infringing the prescribed rules; and in the event of her being arrested, he is always prepared to do battle in her defence.

place from among girls out of place, and work-women without employment; who, on leaving the hospital, have no alternative before them but famine or vice. The houses of the lower class are recruited from the prisons by similar agency. Many of the Dames de Maison obtain their recruits by the aid of correspondents in the country, especially in the manufacturing departments: they often employ regular travellers for the same purpose; and not a few are in league with the persons who keep offices for the hiring of servants, who, without remorse, when a girl more than usually handsome applies for a place, send her to the address of one of the most showy of the licensed Maisons. The train is so well laid, that it very generally succeeds-flattery, dress, luxuries of all sorts, conquer her repugnance, These are the four chief classes which and she devotes herself to a life of shame, constitute that division of the system in without even being aware that she has been which the women continue to be free agents, the victim of a conspiracy. Especial care and mistresses of their own actions; with is taken to keep these unhappy creatures the exception only of their constant subjec- totally penniless, lest they should emancipate tion to the sanatory regulations, and, in the themselves from the thraldom they endure; event of misconduct, to imprisonment. From and if they are suspected of economising, the highest to the lowest, from the femme every art used to lead them into extravagalante who lives surrounded by every lux-gance. In the more splendid establishments ury, to the half-clothed prowler through the streets, all are alike subjected to the dispensary, the hospital, and the prison. The visits to the dispensary are required to be made twice every month, and are recorded on a card, which they are bound to produce, when called upon to do so by the police. Nothing is a more marked characteristic of these wo

personal indulgences are granted to them in excess; yet, no sooner does disease attack them, than they are hurried off without sympathy or remorse from the very centre of luxury to the melancholy wards of a hospital. The vilest, the most revolting, and the most dangerous of all these licensed establishments are the dens in those parts of

the city where the lower classes congregate; the benefit to the offenders would be imsuch as the Grand Barriers and the outward portant and permanent; they would beBoulevards. Day and night, one unceasing come less immoral, and less dangerous subround of riot, debauchery, drunkenness fighting, and theft, takes place in these hot-beds of crime.

jects to the state. But experience has proved that this cannot be. The fact is notorious, that the law is not able to bring Clandestine prostitution has a range as within its coercive powers one-half of the wide as that which is regular and avowed. class. But this is not, we conceive, the A large proportion of the total number of chief objection to it. A portion of the class, femmes-galantes, or kept-mistresses-femmes having the sanction of the law, being under à partie-the girls who habitually frequent its care, legalized and protected, establishthe theatres-workwomen-maid servants es at once a line of demarkation between -and, last and most melancholy of all, it and the remaining part, which holds itchildren, form the catalogue of the 4000 fe- self aloof from all restraint. The consemales who constitute the mass of prostitu- quence is inevitable-the unrestricted portion which does not submit itself to the law. tion become, from the mere circumstance The femmes à partie are a distinct race: they of this distinction, this separation, more are women distinguished generally by their depraved, more audacious, and more danwit and fascinating manners, who are, or gerous than they would be, were there no have been prostitutes. They keep a good such division. The slightest acquaintance table, and receive all visiters who are in- with the nature of the human mind would troduced to them by friends in whom they convince us, à priori, that this must be so; confide: they give dinners, balls, soirées; but not only M. Frégier's volumes, but the and collect around them as many beautiful more circumstantial work of Parent-Duchâfaces as they can-divorced wives-actresses telet, prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, -opera-dancers, and femmes galantes of all that such is the case. From the amount, kinds: they live by the spoils of the thought- therefore, of good, which the exertions of less young men of fortune. In disgraceful the law effect in one half of the mass, is to

results to the other.

But the question

conduct the women who beset the theatres be deducted the amount of evil which equal-they cannot exceed-their parallels in London. This stain upon our national manners has been far too patiently endured, and we hail with gratitude the recent effort of Mr. Macready to free our capital from so foul a reproach.

ance none

which relates to society at large is one of far greater importance; and here there is no balancing of good and evil. The legalizing, the trafficking with vice, the protection and countenance given to it, cannot It has been painful to us to go into these exist without baneful effects extending details; but as of all the divisions of so- themselves directly or indirectly over all ciety this is the one in which the greatest divisions of society. The national scale of difference exists between the two nations, morality is brought down; the distinctions we have deemed it right specially to direct of right and wrong are defaced. A licensed the attention of our readers to it. That brothel and a licensed gambling-house are both in a moral and a religious point of less dangerous places to those who freview it is a subject of the deepest import-quent them than similar abodes of vice uncan doubt; and it deserves, subjected to control; but to society at large consequently, the calm attention of the the injury resulting from the union of crime political economist. English feelings and and law is incalculably greater. France English prejudices may, perhaps, bias our has already perceived this as regards the judgment; our neighbours consider us an- one vice, and sanctioned gambling-houses tiquated and unwise in our views on this have ceased to exist. branch of civil government; and we know It is proved, that among the prostitutes that the French system of legalized prosti- in Paris a considerable number economize tution is gradually spreading over other their gains, are depositors in the savings. European nations. We do not wonder banks, and acquire the means of quitting that it should do so; for, unquestionably, their vicious course of life: it is proved, there are many advantages connected with also, that a large proportion of these unit. These are upon the surface. The ob- happy women do ultimately obtain re-adjections lie deeper. If legal surveillance mission into their original classes of society. could, without undue interference with the Could we restrict our views to these indiliberty of the subject, be made to extend viduals, the knowledge that such is the over all those who are tainted with this case would be consolatory: but we must vice, great good, great diminution of crime, | look also at those by whom they are redisease and misery, would be the result;ceived: we then perceive that it is the ab