hanged and burnt, together with his skeleton
accomplice, in the public market-place of Aix.
This sentence was carried into effect in the
year sixteen hundred and sixty-four—the
year in which Newton projected the Binomial
Theorum.

Jean Brioché, no less skilful in the
manufacture of automata than Allix, was more
fortunate than he, though he was within an
ace of undergoing the same punishment,
Brioché was a dentist who, about the year
sixteen hundred and fifty, became famous for
the ingenuity with which he constructed
puppets. After amusing Paris and the
provinces, which he traversed on his way into
Switzerland, he stopped at the town of;
Soleure, where he gave a representation in
the presence of a large number of persons,
who had not the slightest idea of what they
were going to see: the newly-invented
Marionettes being at that time quite unknown
on that side of the Jura. But the honest,
stupid Swiss had scarcely set eyes on Pantaloon,
Pierrot, the Devil, the Doctor, and the
rest of their fantastic companions, than they
began to feel afraid. Never in their lives had
they heard tell of creatures so small, so active,
or so talkative as these, and they came to the
conclusion that they could be nothing but a
family of imps under the orders of Brioché.
The report circulated through the room, and
one or two of the most orthodox posted off
to a magistrate and denounced the poor
dentist as a magician. The judge affrighted, sent
his archers to arrest the sorcerer. Brioché
was pinioned and brought before a full
conclave of magistrates, with his puppets and
their theatre. The evidence was conclusive,
and Brioché and his property were condemned
to be burnt together. The sentence was on
the point of being executed, when one
Dumont, a captain of the Swiss guards in the
service of Louis the Fourteenth, having heard
of what was about to befal a French wizard,
was curious to see him before his execution.
He immediately recognised the man who had
given him so much amusement in Paris, and
hurrying to the magistrates caused them to
suspend the sentence they had pronounced
for four-and-twenty hours, during which he
took the trouble to exhibit the Marionettes
in open day, and fully explain the mystery
of their construction.

To appreciate the extent to which absurdity
has reached when sorcery has been in
question, read the following extract from the
Chronicle of Basle:

"In the month of August, in the year fourteen
hundred and seventy-four, a cock of this city was
accused and convicted of the crime of laying eggs, and
was condemned to be burnt with one of his eggs in the
Kublenberg, or public square, where the ceremony took
place in the presence of a vast concourse of spectators."

That the owner of the unfortunate bird
should not have shared his fate, is one of
those marvels which sorcery alone can
explain.

All these frightful absurdities occurred out
of our own island. But, we have not the
least ground for boasting. It is easily shown
that we, in the same times, were as ignorant,
gross, and cruel.

CRIME'S ARTIFICIAL FLOWERS.

HONOUR TO CRIME, was the announcement,
in letters of some four inches long, which
lately fascinated us at a stall at the Crystal
Palace, at Sydenham. It was no more to be
relied upon for startling novelty, alas! than
the one shilling and elevenpenny articles in
the cheap ticketed shops; but, like them, we
have no doubt it does all that is required of
it—it sells.

The announcement referred to a respectable
guide-book-looking volume, with the
palace pourtrayed upon the top of its
outside leaf, and the commercial business of
the country exemplified by seven steamers
and a buoy, below: the colour yellow, and
the back most favourably eruptive in
advertisements—altogether like an illustrated
Bradshaw. This volume was entitled, Scenes
from the Life of Messrs. Robson and
Redpath, showing the steps by which the
Tempter led them from Honour to Crime.
This was disappointing. We had thought
it possible that the recent articles against
dishonesty, in the Times newspaper, might
have called forth a pamphlet on the other
side of the question; but we were not quite
unremunerated for our purchase either.

In the first place, the very profuse
illustrations were almost all old friends; these
self-same figures, unless our "backward gaze"
(a quotation for which we have to thank
Mr. Robson, upon the faith of his
accomplished biographer) into earlier years, is not
to be trusted, have been represented to our
youthful eyes before in the pages of a popular
serial. These faithful portraits of W. J. R.
are familiar to us as the likenesses of a roué
baronet, of a clergyman of unusually free
behaviour, of other persons of good position
not favourably treated in the above work,
and, in particular, of his Royal Highness
Prince Albert.

The clerks' office at the Crystal Palace,
here depicted, bears a singular resemblance
to a library of palatial splendour, where (we
believe) an M.P. is entertaining the prince
of an independent nation; at one particular
page we think we can swear to Mr. R.'s
presentment as being the double of a certain
picture of a shooting jacket (with a man
inside it), price eighteen shillings: and we
cannot but associate a graceful sketch of a
sheriff's officer in possession, with an old
familiar image of a resurrection man. In
the life of Mr. Redpath, too—of which,
however, we do not further intend to treat; his
biography after that of Mr. Robson's being
a bathos, although he achieved a still
higher success, in having had the honour