diate cause of his incurring the cardinal's displeasure was, as he tells us in his Mémoires, his neglecting to keep an appointment to dinner. On the day preceding the memorable Day of the Dupes (la Journée des Dupes), the 30th of November, 1630, Bassompierre met the cardinal in one of the passages of the Louvre. He accosted him, ard Richelieu feigned to receive the courtesy as a favour to a poor disgraced minister.' Bassompierre, in the fulness of his benevolence, condescended to invite himself to dine with the cardinal, and the offer was accepted. It happened, however, unfortunately that two noblemen, enemies of the cardinal, met Bassompierre in the course of the day, and ' debauched him to dine with them, and the poor disgraced minister' was forgotten.

On the 23rd of February, 1631, Bassompierre was arrested, by Richelieu's orders, and sent to the Bastille, where he was confined for twelve years; that is, till the death of the cardinal. He tells us, that the day before he was arrested he burned upwards of 6000 love-letters which he had received at different times from his female admirers -a pretty decisive proof of the reputation which induced Madame de Montpensier, when recalling the brilliant visions of her youth, to designate him as 'cet illustre Bassompierre.' (See the Preface to the translation of Bassompierre's English Embassy, ascribed on personal knowledge by Mr. D'Israeli to the Right Hon. J. W. Croker.)

He employed his time during his imprisonment in writing his Mémoires and revising his Ambassades; but both are so very dull and jejune, that we cannot help regarding him as one of those men whose fame has been mainly owing to the advantages of a good person and address. There is not a single passage in all his writings which would lead us to conclude that he was 'the wittiest man of his time; and even those anecdotes and bons mots which are attributed to him in the French Ana, are not calculated to impress us with a high notion of his mental accomplishments.

Bassompierre died of apoplexy on the 12th of April, 1646, | three years after his liberation from prison. It is alleged that he was offered the guardianship of the young monarch Louis XIV., but age, or, as Mr. Croker conjectures, the 'wholesome discipline of the Bastille, had cured him of all ambition as a courtier, and he declined the perilous honour. (Mémoires de Mareschal de Bassompierre, 4 tomes, Amsterdam, edition 1723; Bassompierre's Embassy to England, translated, with notes, London, 1819; Memoirs of Henry the Great of France, 2 vols. London, 1829; and the works referred to in the text.)

BASSOON, a musical instrument of the pneumatic kind, blown through a reed. It consists of four pieces, or tubes of wood, bound together and pierced for ventages, of a brass craned neck, in which the reed is inserted, and of several keys. The whole length of the tubes is 6 feet, but by doubling up, this is reduced to four. It may be considered as a base oboe [see ОBоE]; and its compass is from B flat

This instrument is used in every kind of music, for the richness of its tone and extent of its scale render it invaluable to the composer. Handel seems to have been the first who gave importance to it, and in the air Thou didst blow, in the oratorio of Israel in Egypt, exhibited its qualities in so advantageous a manner, that it immediately afterwards began to assume a rank in the orchestra which has ever since been increasing.

The bassoon was invented as early as the year 1539, three years after Luscinius had published his Musurgia, who consequently does not mention the instrument. Mersenne describes it and all its varieties; but a long time elapsed before it came into use. The word is derived from the Italian bassone, which is now rarely used. The common Italian term is fagotto, a fagot, or bundle of sticks, because the tubes of which the instrument is composed are bound together. The Italian word fagotto is always employed in musical scores.

BASSOON, DOUBLE, a bassoon of increased dimensions, the scale of which is an octave below that of the ordinary bassoon. The double-bassoon was introduced at the commemoration of Handel in 1794, but not found to answer the intended purpose, and has now fallen into utter disuse,

the Serpent [see SERPENT] well supplying the place which it was meant to fill. BASSORAH. [See BASRA.]

BASSUS, in entomology, a genus of the order Hymenoptera, and family Braconida. These are four-winged flies, with long and narrow bodies. They frequent the flowers of umbelliferous plants.

BAST, FREDERICK JAMES, a scholar of considerable eminence, was born in the state of Hesse-Darmstadt, about the year 1772. He received his earliest instruction from his father at Bouxviller, but afterwards studied in the University of Jena, under Professors Griesbach and Schütz. His first literary essay was a commentary upon Plato's Symposion, which was followed in 1796 by a specimen of an intended new edition of the Letters of Aristænetus. He lived at this time at Vienna, where he was in the suite of M. de Jan, the resident from Hesse-Darmstadt; and where, in the Imperial Library, he had found a manuscript of Aristænetus, which afforded most important readings for improving the text of that author.

The landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt afterwards made him secretary of legation at the congress of Radstadt; and finally placed him in the same capacity with the Baron de Pappenheim, his minister at Paris. To mark his approbation of Bast's literary studies, the landgrave also bestowed upon him the reversion of the keepership of the Library of Darmstadt, a post which he preferred to more brilliant honours that he might have claimed, but which were less suited to his literary taste.

Bast, uniting the labours of philology with those of diplomacy, profited very much during his stay in Paris by the collation and copying of a considerable number of Greek manuscripts. It was a most advantageous residence for him, as the best classical treasures of the Vatican had at that time been recently transported to France.

Of the importance of his critical researches some estimate may be formed from his Lettre Critique à M. J. F. Boissonade sur Antoninus Liberalis, Parthenius, et Aristénete, 8vo. Paris, 1805. This work, of rather more than 250 pages, was originally intended for insertion in Millin's Magasin Encyclopédique, and was on that account written in French, bnt growing upon the author's hands, it became a book, and stands in the first rank of treatises on verbal criticism. It was in a volume of the Vatican, No. 398 of the Greek manuscripts, which had once belonged to the electoral library at Heidelberg, that he found the manuscripts of Antoninus Liberalis and Parthenius; and the same volume contained seventeen other manuscripts, some of them inedited, of each of which, in the Letter to M. Boissonade, Bast has given a notice.

Schæfer's edition of Gregorius of Corinth, and some other grammarians, published at Leipzig, 2 vols. 8vo. 1811, contains Bast's Notes on that author, with a Palæographical Dissertation (accompanied by seven Plates of fac-similes from Greek manuscripts), which is considered to be a master-piece of erudition. The remarks of Bast relative to the various kinds of connections and contractions which he met with in the numerous MSS. which he consulted, have been extracted from the body of his works by John Hodgkin, the editor of the Calligraphia et Poecilographia Græca, and will shortly be published for the use of those who are engaged in the labour of reading or collating Greek MSS.

Bast died of apoplexy at Paris, Nov. 15, 1811. His Notes upon Aristænetus were published in a variorum edition of that author by his friend M. Jo. Fr. Boissonade, 8vo. Lutetiæ, 1822. (See the Biographie Universelle, Supplem. tom. lvii. 8vo. Paris, 1834, and the works above quoted.) BASTAN. [See BAZTAN.]

BASTARD. The conjectures of etymologists on the origin of this word are various and unsatisfactory. Its root has been sought in several languages:-the Greek, Saxon, German, Welsh, Icelandic, and Persian. For the grounds on which the pretensions of all these languages are respectively supported, we refer the curious to the glossaries of Ducange and Spelman, the more recent one of Boucher, and to the notes on the title Bastard in Dodd and Gwillim's edition of Bacon's Abridgment, vol. i. p. 746.

Among English writers it is applied to a child not born in lawful wedlock; and as such he is technically distinguished from a mulier (filius mulieratus), who is the legitimate offspring of a mulier or married woman,

Our ancestors very early adopted strict notions on the subject of legitimacy; and when the prelates of the 13th

is then made, in which the male offender is adjudged to be the reputed father, and is ordered to contribute a weekly payment, or is bound to indemnify the parish against the future expenses of maintenance.

On another point our ancestors were less reasonable; for it was very early received for law not only that the fact of birth after marriage was essential to legitimacy, but that it was conclusive of it. Hence it was long a maxim that nothing but physical or natural impossibility, such as the continued absence of the husband beyond seas, &c., could prevent the child so born from being held legitimate, or justify an inquiry into the real paternity.

Their liberality in the case of posthumous children was also remarkable for in the case of the Countess of Gloucester, in the reign of Edward II., a child born one year and seven months after the death of the duke, was pronounced legitimate; a degree of indulgence only exceeded by the complaisance of Mr. Serjeant Rolfe, in the reign of Henry VI., who was of opinion that a widow might give birth to a child at the distance of seven years after her husband's decease, without wrong to her reputation. (See Coke upon Littleton, 123, b. note by Mr. Hargrave; Rolle's Abridgsent, Bastard; and Le Marchant's Preface to the case of the Banbury Peerage.)

The law now stands on a more reasonable footing, and the fact of birth during marriage, or within a competent the after the husband's death, is now held to be only a stong presumption of legitimacy, capable of being repelled b satisfactory evidence to the contrary.

Another curious position of doubtful authority is also find in our old text writers; namely, that where a wlow marries again so soon after her husband's decease tht a child born afterwards may reasonably be supposed to bythe child of either husband, then the child, upon attaining toyears of discretion, shall be at liberty to choose which of th two shall be accounted his father. It was to obviate tis embarrassing state of things that the civil law prescribed at annum luctus,' or year of grief, during which the widow wa prohibited from contracting a second marriage; and our own law provided the now obsolete proceeding on a writ de ventre inspiciendo.

The legal incapacities under which an illegitimate child labours by the law of England are few, and are chiefly confined to the cases of inheritance and succession. He is regarded for most purposes as the son of nobody, and is therefore heir-at-law to none of his reputed ancestors. He is entitled to no distributive share of the personal property of his parents, if they die intestate; and even under a will he can only take where he is distinctly pointed out in it as an object of the testator's bounty, and not under the general description of 'son,'' daughter,' or child, by which legitimate children alone are presumed to be designated. He may, however, acquire property himself, and thus become the founder of a fresh inheritance, though none of his lineal descendants can claim through him the property of his reputed relations. If he dies without wife, issue, or will, his lands and goods escheat to the crown, or lord of the fee. In the former event it is usual for the crown to resign its claim to the greater part of the property on the petition of some of his nearest quasi kindred.

Strictly speaking, a bastard has no surname until he has acquired one by reputation, and in the meantime he is properly called by that of his mother.

The first English statute which provides for the maintenance of illegitimate children, is the 18th of Elizabeth, cap. 3, which confers on justices of the peace the power of punishing the parents, and of requiring from one or both of them a weekly or other payment for their support. Under this and later acts of parliament, the usual practice has been for the mother to apply for relief to the parish officers, by whom she is carried before certain magistrates to be interrogated respecting the paternity of the child. An order of filiation

According to late official tables, the proportion of illegitimate to legitimate births was in the year 1830 as one to twenty in England; the proportion in France is as one to thirteen, and in Paris alone as one to three. The proportion in Wales was as one to thirteen in the year 1830; but in no city or town in the British islands is the proportion comparable with that of Paris. In Denmark the illegitimate are one in ninety-six in Norway one in fourteen; and in Hamburgh one in five. (Reports of Poor-Law Commissioners.)

The civilians and canonists distinguish illegitimate children into four or five classes not recognised in the English law; it may however be worth while to remark, that the familiar term natural, applied by us to all children born out of wedlock, is in that classification confined to those only who are the offspring of unmarried parents, living in concubinage, and who labour under no legal impediment to intermarriage. Children of the last-mentioned class are, by the civil and canon law, capable of legitimation by the subsequent union of the parents, or by other acts which it is needless here to particularize. (See Heineccius, Syntag, vol. i., p. 139; Ridley's View, &c., p. 350, ed. 1675; Godolphin's Repertorium Canonicum, chap. 35.)

By the Athenian law (passed in the archonship of Eucleides, B.C. 403), as quoted by Demosthenes (Against Macartatus, cap. 12), illegitimate children were cut out from all inheritance and succession; nor could a man, who had legitimate male offspring, leave his property to other persons, and consequently not to his illegitimate children. A previous law of Pericles (see his Life by Plutarch, cap. 37) declared that those only were legitimate and Athenian citizens who were born of two Athenian parents. This law, which was repealed or violated in favour of a son of Pericles, was re-enacted in the archonship of Eucleides. (Athenæus, xiii. 577. Demosthenes Against Eubulides, cap. 10.)

The repute in which spurious children have been held has varied in different ages and countries. In some they have been subjected to a degree of opprobrium which was inconsistent with justice; in others the distinction between base and legitimate birth appears to have been but faintly recognised, and the child of unlicensed love has avowed his origin with an indifference which argued neither a sense of shame nor a feeling of inferiority. When the Conqueror commenced his missive to the Earl of Bretagne by the words, I, William, surnamed the Bastard,' he can have felt no desire to conceal the obliquity of his descent, and little fear that his title would be defeated by it. Accordingly, history presents us with many instances in which the succession not only to property, but to kingdoms, has been successfully claimed by the spurious issue of the ancestor. It is, however, very improbable that in any state of society where the institution of marriage has prevailed, children born in concubinage and in lawful wedlock should ever have been regarded by the law with exactly equal favour. (See Ducange, Glossary, tit. Bastardus.)

Those who may be curious to learn what fanciful writers have urged in proof of the superior mental and physical endowments of illegitimate issue, may refer to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. ii., p. 16 (ed. 1821); Pasquier Recherches, chap. De quelques memorables bâtards; and Pontus Heuterus de Liberâ Hominis Nativitate. See also Shakspeare's Lear, act 1, scene 2; and the observations of Dr. Elliotson in his edition of Blumenbach's Physiology, in notes to chap. 40.

BASTARDY. The Scottish law of Bastardy differs considerably from the English, chiefly in consequence of its

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Thus, in England, in the case of a divorce in the spiritual court, à vinculo matrimonii,' the issue born during the coverture are bastards. But agreeably to the judgment of the canons, Decret. Greg., lib. iv., tit. 17, c. 14, the Scottish writers, proceeding on the bona fides of the parties, incline to a different opinion, in favorem prolis; and it will be recollected that when Secretary Lethington proposed to Mary Queen of Scots a divorce from Darnley, James Earl of Bothwell, to quiet her fears for her son, allegit the exampill of himself, that he ceissit not to succeid to his father's heritage, without any difficultie, albeit thair was divorce betwixt him and his mother. The point has not, however, received a judicial determination, and cannot therefore be regarded as settled, though of the tendency of the law there can be little doubt. Even in the case of a marriage between a party divorced for adultery and the adulterer, which by stat. 1600, c. 20, following the civil law, is declared null and unlawful in itself, and the succession to be gotten of sik unlawful conjunctions unliable to succeid as heires to their said parents; the issue are not accounted bastards, though,' as Stair adds, b. iii., tit. 3, sect. 42, they may be debarred from succession.' Of course, the issue of every legal marriage are lawful, and therefore the children not only of marriages regularly solemnized, but also of every union acknowledged by the law as a marriage, are alike legitimate. The same may be said of children legitimated by the subsequent intermarriage of their parents; but the situation of these is, as we shall immediately see, somewhat anomalous.

The Scottish law has adopted two species of legitimation, which, in the language of the civil law, they call legitimation per subsequens matrimonium, and legitimation per rescriptum principis.

The former of these was introduced into the Roman jurisprudence by a constitution of the Emperor Constantine the Great, but did not become a permanent method of legitimation till the time of Justinian. It was afterwards taken up by the Roman pontiffs and disseminated by the ecclesiastics throughout Europe. At the parliament of Merton, however, the doctrine met with a repulse from the barons of England.

Though the English law was preserved inviolate, yet the ecclesiastics did not cease to press the point among the people, and to this day we may remark traces of the custom in some of the remoter districts of the island. The doctrine was certainly no part of the antient common law of Scotland any more than of England; but it is now settled law there, and its rise and establishment are at once accounted for, when we consider the former strong or rather paramount influence of the canon and civil laws in that country. The principle on which the doctrine rests is the fiction of law that the parents were married at their child's birth. If therefore the parents could not have then legally married, or if a mid impediment has intervened between the birth and the intermarriage, the fiction is excluded, and previous issue will not be legitimated by marriage. Further, it is held that if the child was born, or if the intermarriage took place, in a country which does not acknowledge the doctrine of legitimation by subsequent marriage, the child will remain a bastard; the character of bastardy being in the one case indelible, and the marriage in the other ineffectual to create legitimacy. On the other hand, a child legitimated per subsequens matrimonium is entitled to all the rights and privileges of lawful issue, and will, as respects inheritance and the like, take precedence of subsequent issue born in actual wedlock yet in England the judges have held, that a child born in Scotland before marriage and legitimated in Scotland by subsequent marriage, though in point of fact the first-born son, and in status and condition, by comity, legitimate in England, will not succeed to land in England. (See Doe dem. Birtwhistle v. Vardill, 5 Barn. and Cress. 438; and opinions of the judges in dom. proc. 10th June, 1830.)

Legitimation per rescriptum principis proceeds on a less abstract and more generally-acknowledged principle than the preceding. Though therefore it is said to have been invented by Justinian, and copied by one of the popes of Rome, yet concessions in the nature of letters of legitimation are not peculiar to the Roman law. The form of these letters seems to have been borrowed by the Scots immediately out of the old French jurisprudence: their clauses are usually

offices whatsoever, and to do all acts in judgment or outwith, and, in short, imparting to him all the public rights of lawful children and natural born subjects, together with a cession of the crown's rights by reason of bastardy; but as the crown cannot affect the rights of third persons without their consent, letters of legitimation do not carry a right of inheritance to the prejudice of lawful issue.

As, in the Mosaic law, a bastard was debarred from the congregation, so, according to the canons, he is, in strictness, incapable of holy orders; and, indeed, it has been the policy of most nations to incapacitate bastards in divers ways, that if men will not be deterred from immorality by a sense of the injury accruing to themselves, they may by a consideration of the evils resulting to their offspring. But whatever may be the operation of those incapacities, they are felt by all to be wrongs inflicted on the innocent, and as Justinian properly observed when he made legitimation per subsequens matrimonium a perpetual ordinance, indigni non sunt qui alieno vitio laborant. Accordingly the doctrine is now obsolete in England and nearly so in Scotland. The only remaining incapacity in Scotland seems to be want of power to make a testament in the particular case of the bastard having no lawful issue. Letters of legitimation were formerly necessary in all cases; but it is now held that as the crown's right of succession is excluded by the existence of issue, a bastard who has lawful issue may dispose of his goods by testament in any way he thinks fit. With the above exception only, then, there is no distinction between a bastard and another man; and so he may dispose of his heritage in liege poustie, and of his moveables inter vivos, and (if he has lawful issue) by testament, and he may succeed to any estate, real or personal, by special destination. To his lawful children also he may appoint testamentary guardians; and his widow has her provisions like other relicts. It is to be noted, however, that in the eye of law a bastard is nullius filius; and being thus of kin to nobody, he cannot be heir-at-law to any one, neither can he have such heirs save his own lawful issue. Where a bastard dies, leaving no heir, the crown, as ultimus hæres, takes up his property, which, if it be land holden in capite, is at once consolidated with the superiority; but if it be holden of a subject, the crown appoints a donatary, who, to conplete his title, must obtain decree of declarator of bastary, a process in the nature of the English writ of escheat, and thereupon he is presented by the king to the superior as his vassal.

But though bastards are legally nullius filii, yet the law takes notice of their natural relationship to several purposes, and particularly to enforce the natural duties of their parents. These duties are comprised under the term aliment, which here, as in the civil law, comprehends both maintenance and education; including under this latter term, as Lord Stair says (b. 1, tit. 5, sec. 6), 'the breeding of them for some calling and employment according to their capacity and condition. These were at least the principles on which the courts proceeded in awarding aliment to children. In determining who is the father of a bastard, the Scots courts again proceed on the principles of the civil law. In Scotland there must first be semi-plenary evidence of the paternity, and then, when such circumstantial or other proof of that fact is adduced as will amount to semiplena probatio, the mother is admitted to her oath in supplement. The whole aliment is not due from one parent but from both parents. This is the principle; and therefore in determining what shall be payable by the father, the ability of the mother to contribute is also considered. The absolute amount of aliment, however, is in the discretion of the court, as is likewise its duration. Where the parties are paupers, the bastard's settlement is not the father's but the mother's parish, and if that is unknown, the parish of its birth.

The mother of a bastard is entitled to its custody during its infancy; and it would seem that afterwards the father may take the rearing of the child into his own hand, and also, perhaps, nominate to it tutors and curators. This last power has been denied: if it does not exist it ought to be now bestowed by act of parliament, and by the same means the last remnant of a bastard's civil incapacity removed by his being permitted to make a testament, though he have no lawful issue.

BASTENNES, a village in France, in the department of Landes and in the canton of Amou, which is a small

gate was closed, and the road carried without the building. In 1634 a fosse, 120 feet wide and 25 feet deep, was dug all round; and beyond that a stone wall, 36 feet high, was built all round. Thus the Bastile became, from a fortified gate, one of the strongest fortresses of the kind in Europe. The towers contained several octagonal rooms one above the other, each having one window pierced in the walls, which were rather more than six feet thick. This window was without any glazing, was wide internally, but narrow like a loop-hole on the outside: in the centre was a perpendicular bar of iron, and two cross-barred gratings between that and the internal part. The entrance to each of these rooms was secured by double doors eight inches thick, strapped with iron, and placed at the distance of the thickness of the walls from each other. There were no fire-places or chimneys in these rooms. The only article of furniture, if it may be so called, was an iron grating, raised about six inches from the floor, to receive the prisoner's mattress, and prevent its decay from the damp of the stone floor. To each tower there was a way by a narrow winding staircase. The apartments constructed in the walls, connecting the towers, were larger and more commodious than the others, and were provided with fire-places and chimneys, but with similar precautions for preventing the escape of prisoners. They were usually assigned to persons of some importance, or to those who were treated with indulgence. The rest of the Bastile consisted of two open courts: the larger, 102 feet by 72, called the Great Court; the smaller, 72 by 42 feet, French measure, called the Court of the Well, was separated from the first by a range of buildings and offices, having a passage through them. The height of the building within was 73 feet, but greater on the outside next the fosse. (See the plan in the British Museum.)

In modern times the establishment of the Bastile consisted of a governor, a deputy-governor or lieutenant du roi, a major, an aide-major, a physician and surgeons, a certain number of invalid soldiers and Swiss in the pay of France to perform the military duty of the fortress, with turnkeys to watch over the prisoners, and cooks and other domestics. The office of governor was very lucrative, and the pay and perquisites supposed to amount to 60,000 francs per annum. The other officers were but indifferently remunerated. No officer or soldier could dine out without permission of the governor, or sleep out without an order froin the prime minister. The invalids were usually about 100 men, with two captains and a lieutenant, who were well paid. The men had ten sols per diem, with wood, candles, washing, and other allowances. The average expense of the Bastile is said to have been 60,000 francs per month. The governor and deputy-governor superintended the general management of the fortress, the major and his deputy kept all the accounts, including a particular list of all the prisoners, in seven columns, containing, 1. Name and quality of the prisoner; 2. When he entered; 3. By whom the order for his detention signed; 4. When discharged; 5. By whom the order of discharge signed; 6. Cause of detention; 7. Observations or remarks. The last is said to have been filled up only under the direction of the minister or of the lieutenant of police. Prisoners were almost always taken to the Bastile by an exempt of police and two or three armed men in a hackney coach, to avoid observation, and were conducted direct to the governor at his house, to whom the exempt delivered the lettre de cachet and took a receipt for it. The prisoner was then led into the body of the fortress, a sign being first made to all the soldiers on duty to cover their faces with their hats during his passage. This was invariably done whenever a prisoner entered or left the Bastile. On his arrival at his room the prisoner was requested to empty his pockets. A list was made of the contents by the major, and signed by the prisoner. His watch, rings, and every other article were taken from him. He was then left for some days without the means of writing; after which he underwent an examination before the lieutenant of police, or some other officer. The interrogators usually began by informing the prisoner that his life was in great danger, and that to save it depended on himself; that if he would freely confess, they were authorised to promise his discharge, otherwise he would be given over to an extraordinary commission; that they had written and oral testimony against him; that his accomplices, his friends, his relatives, had owned every thing; that the king was indulgent; and that they advised him, as his friends, not to conceal the least particular. If by these means they succeeded in extracting the

evidence they wished, they then informed him that they had not yet a precise authority for his discharge, but that they hoped shortly to obtain it, would even solicit it, and that he should shortly hear more about it. According to circumstances these examinations were repeated, and no means which cunning could suggest were omitted to entrap and intimidate the prisoner, to draw from him his secret if he had one, or to make him commit himself, or his family, or friends, by dangerous admissions or indiscreet replies. The treatment of the prisoners depended entirely on the will of the governor, who was interested in their being detained, as he contracted with the government for their maintenance, and derived a profit from it; and he being the only channel by which the prisoners could communicate with their friends or with the government, he could suppress their applications if he thought fit. We have the concurrent testimony of almost all the prisoners who have written their memoirs, that the food was bad and scantily supplied, and that all other necessaries were of the worst description. The duration of a prisoner's detention was arbitrary. No term was ever specified. The longest we have been able to discover, from the registers published after the taking of the Bastile, is that of Isaac Armet de la Motte, who was removed to Charenton (a lunatic asylum and prison), after a confinement in the Bastile of fifty-four years and five months. In this registry there are several others of thirty years and upwards. The first historical mention of any imprisonment in this fortress is that of Hugues d'Aubriot himself, who having given offence to the clergy, and being accused by them of blasphemy and impiety, was sentenced to be imprisoned for life, but being transferred to another prison, he regained his liberty in the insurrection of a faction called the Mailliotins. The only prisoners who ever effected their escape from the Bastile were two persons of the name of De la Tude and D'Aligre. They were confined together in one of the apartments constructed in the walls of the Bastile. By unravelling their linen, stockings, and other parts of their clothes, and by saving from time to time the billets of wood allowed for their firing, they contrived to make two ladders, one a rope-ladder, near 180 feet long, with rounds of wood covered with flannel to prevent any rattling noise against the walls; the other a wooden ladder, about 30 feet long, consisting of a centre piece, in joints, to be fastened by tenons and mortices, and through which passed wooden pegs to hold it together. The first was to enable them to descend from the platform, or the top of the Bastile, into the fosse; the second to ascend the rampart into the garden of the governor. The ladders, as well as the tools they had formed for making them, were concealed, when the turnkeys visited them, under the floor of their apartment. They cut through the iron gratings in the chimney, which they ascended, and taking advantage of a dark night, got upon the platform. Having first lowered their wooden ladder, they fastened that of rope to one of the cannons of the fortress and descended into the fosse. Finding a patrole with a light in the governor's garden, they altered their plan, and with a handspike formed of one of the iron bars of the chimney grating, made a hole in the wall next the Rue St. Antoine, through which they effected their escape on the 26th of February, 1756. After the revolution of 1789 La Tude claimed and received these ladders, and they were publicly exhibited at Paris in the autumn of that year. Of all the prisoners in the Bastile none have excited curiosity so strongly as the person usually called the Man with the Iron Mask. The extraordinary secrecy observed with respect to this person, and the attention said to have been shown him, have given rise to a variety of conjectures concerning him, more especially as no person of importance was at that time missing in Europe. He has been supposed to have been a twin-brother of Louis XIV., the celebrated Duc de Beaufort, the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth, the Intendant Fouquet, and Ercolo Matthioli, prime minister to the Duke of Mantua. Our space does not permit us to investigate these opinions, or to enter into details respecting them, further than to observe that the last mentioned seems to rest on the best foundation.