which it flourished long after it had died out in New England. We will only quote the lamentation of the last witch-judge, as recorded by Increase Mather-a bitter foe to witches-over the commonsense-compelled cessation of the tragedies that had been enacted in Salem and other towns in New England. It reminds one very forcibly of the predictions indulged in by a famous English chancellor that England's sun would infallibly set on the day that her parliament should decide on doing justice and loving mercy. The last court for the trial of witches sat at Charlestown, February 17, 1693. The judge said: “That who it was obstructed the execution of justice, or hindered those good proceedings, he knew not, but thereby the kingdom of Satan was advanced, and the Lord have mercy upon the country!" Increase Mather does not give the name of this indignant justice; but the important part of the business, that all the witches in custody were discharged, and no more prosecutions permitted, is duly and circumstantially set forth in his History of New England Witchcraft, compiled at the request of the New England divines.

The material progress of the colony meanwhile was unprecedented ---marvellous. New England had attained a giant growth; whilst other settlements on the same continent, with much greater advantages as to climate, soil, and previous organisation, were still in a condition of doubtful vitality. The Puritan emigration amounted from first to last, according to Mr Bancroft, the historian of the United States, to 21,200 individuals, who, says the same authority, by the time the Long Parliament met in England, when the movement, as a peculiar and distinctive one, may be said to have ceased, had marked out and commenced fifty towns and thirty villages, built between thirty and forty chapels, begun to export furs and timber, carried grain and cured fish to the West Indies, and in 1643, had ships upon the stocks of 400 tons burden! The youth and manhood of New England have, it is well known, amply realised the dazzling promise of its infancy. It was chiefly with reference to the astounding commercial enterprise of this state, that Mr Burke and others in the British House of Commons in 1775, uplifted their hands with astonishment, exclaiming: 'What in the world was ever equal to it!' It was in Boston the flame burst forth which, kindling the rifle-flashes of Bunker's Hill, taught the astounded ministers of George III., that the old spirit which had vindicated English liberties at Marston Moor and Naseby-and in so doing, prepared the way for the yet far-off constitutional and beneficent monarchy under which the people of these islands have now the happiness to live-glowed as brightly as ever in the hearts of Englishmen, wherever upon the earth's wide surface they might chance to have been born! New England, too, was the first state in America, in the world, to declare the slave-trade piracy-capital felony; and her free schools, set on foot in the early days of the colony, were the type

and precursors of the public educational establishments throughout the Union. Neither can there be any question, that although the Virginian city of Washington is the governmental, and New York the commercial capital of the republic, New England is its intellectual metropolis. Above all, the soul and centre of the great moral agitation which in recent years has pulled down the huge enormity that, like the hideous intolerance whose doings we have faintly recited-and inherited, let us never forget to acknowledge, from the same source as that-mocked by revolting contrast the liberty with which it was associated, as well as drowned in its chainclankings and muttered slave-curses the triumphal hymns to freedom and the natural rights of humanity that resounded throughout the vast, and, in so many aspects, glorious republic of the West.

T the eastern boundary of Paris, on the way towards the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise, we have occasion to cross an open space, on which once stood the famous prisonfortress, the Bastille. The name of Bastille or Bastel was, in ancient times, given to any kind of erection calculated to withstand a military force; and thus, formerly in England and on the borders of Scotland, the term Bastel-house was usually applied to places of strength and fancied security. Of the many Bastilles in France, that at Paris, whose history we propose to narrate, and which at first was called the Bastille St-Antoine, from being erected near the suburb of St-Antoine, retained the name longest. This fortress, of melancholy celebrity, was erected under the following circumstances.

In the year 1356, when the English, then at war with France, were in the neighbourhood of Paris, it was considered necessary by the inhabitants of the French capital to repair the bulwarks of their city. Stephen Marcel, provost of the merchants, undertook this task, and amongst other defences, added to the fortifications at the eastern entrance to the town a gate flanked with a tower on each side. The popularity which the provost acquired by this measure, and others equally judicious, was for some time considerable; but his secret connection with the king of Navarre, who laid pretensions to the French throne, proved his ruin. On the 31st of July 1358, he attempted to introduce that prince into Paris through the gate of

the Bastille, but his intention having transpired, he could not succeed in having it opened. His enemies, who were alike fierce and numerous, soon reached the spot, and surrounded him. The provost, holding the keys in his hand, strove to defend himself from his assailants, and, ascending the entrance-ladder, endeavoured to take refuge in one of the towers; but a man named De Charny having struck him on the head with his axe, he fell, and was despatched by the infuriated crowd at the foot of that Bastille which he had himself caused to be erected.

Hugh Aubriot, the next who, after Stephen Marcel, added to the constructions of the Bastille, proved scarcely more fortunate. He was provost of Paris under Charles V., king of France, who, not thinking the walls of the Bastille sufficiently strong and high, and wishing to complete them, charged him to superintend the necessary extensions. In the year 1369, Aubriot accordingly added two towers, which, being placed opposite to those already existing on each side of the gate, made of the Bastille a square fort, with a tower at each of the four angles. Notwithstanding his great talents and integrity, or rather on account of these very qualities, Aubriot had acquired many enemies, by whom, on the death of Charles V., he was bitterly persecuted. Although, owing to the influence of his friends at court, his life was spared, he was condemned to perpetual confinement, and placed in the Bastille, of which, according to some historians, he was the first prisoner. After some time, he was thence conveyed to Fort l'Evêque, another prison, where he remained forgotten until 1381. The Maillotins, a band of insurgents, so named from the leaden mallets with which they were armed, then delivered him, to place him at their head; but though he seemingly joined in their plans, Aubriot escaped from them the same night, and safely reached Burgundy, his native province, where he died within the space of a year.

After the insurrection of the Maillotins in 1382, the young king, Charles VI., still further enlarged the Bastille by adding four towers to it, thus giving it, instead of the square form it formerly possessed, the shape of an oblong or parallelogram. The fortress now consisted of eight towers, each a hundred feet high, and, like the wall which united them, nine feet thick. Four of those towers looked on the city, and four on the suburb of St-Antoine. To increase its strength, the Bastille was surrounded by a ditch twenty-five feet deep, and a hundred and twenty feet wide. The road which formerly passed through it was turned on one side, the old gate blocked up, and a new one, which retained the name of its predecessor, erected on the left of the fortress. The Bastille was now completed (1383), and though additions were subsequently made to it, the body of the fortress underwent no important change.

Each of the eight towers which composed the Bastille bore a different name. One of the two which had been erected by Stephen

Marcel was called the Tower of the Chapel; and the other, the Tower of the Treasure, from the large sums deposited in it by Sully, minister of Henri IV. One of those added by Aubriot received the name of the Tower of Liberty, and the other the Tower de la Bertaudière; whilst of the four towers which Charles VI. caused to be built, one was termed the Tower of the Well, from the well which was near it; the second, the Tower of the Corner, on account of its position; the third, the Tower de la Bazinière, from a gentleman of that name who was confined in it; and the fourth, the Tower de la Comté. Each of the towers was four stories high, besides the low and horrible dungeons situated beneath the level of the soil. Nothing can be conceived more gloomy or wretched than one of these noisome dens. The damp stone walls and ceiling were continually dropping water, and the slimy flooring swarmed with rats, toads, newts, and other kinds of vermin. A narrow slit in the wall, on the side of the ditch, admitted light, and too frequently, instead of air, unwholesome exhalations, to this abode of misery; a few planks, supported by iron bars fixed in the wall, and scantily covered with straw, formed the prisoner's couch; whilst ponderous double doors, each seven inches thick, and provided with enormous locks and bolts, shut out the captive from the world, and never admitted any other form than that of a jailer.

The first three floors above this dungeon consisted each of a single room of an irregular octagonal shape, about eighteen feet high, and twenty feet wide. Most of the rooms had double ceilings, a fact which the prisoner De la Tude discovered, and turned to advantage, by making use of this vacant space to conceal in it the rope-ladder through which he effected his escape. A small closet, made in the thickness of the walls, frequently accompanied these apartments. The room on the fourth and last floor, termed La Calotte, was narrower and lower than the rest. It was so arched, in order to support a platform above, that the individual confined in it could not stand upright in any other part than the centre. The narrow windows or openings which gave light to these apartments afforded no prospect from without, not only on account of the thickness of the walls, but also owing to the double grating of iron bars, each as thick as a man's arm, with which they were provided. In the lower stories of the building these openings were half filled up with stone and mortar, and even some of them could not be reached save by ascending three steps. The floorings were either of tiles or stones, and the chimneys were secured by iron bars in several places. All the rooms, and even the staircases leading to them, were closed by thick double doors. Previously to the year 1761, it was in some of those apartments, then of course more comfortable, but the only official ones, that the governor and his suite resided.

Both as a place of military defence, and as a state prison of great strength, the Bastille was, even at an early period, very formidable.