name of the Buccaneer (probably Flibustiere in French, for the Parisian who mentioned this circumstance at Verdun related it in English without giving her nom de guerre, or nickname in French.) He said, that he had frequently made one of a jovial party to pass an evening at her institut in the Rue St. Honoré, and that if the number of the visitors exceeded that of her protegeés, Madame Wirion used to send to the neighbouring bagnios for fresh recruits. GENERAL WIRION. THE light in which the French consider their generals at present, appears in a translation of the fourteenth satire of Juvenal. A father is represented exhorting his son to make a fortune by hook or by crook. Lueri bonus est odor ex re qua libet, &c. La fortune, jeune homme, et rien que la fortune! Suis-la dans les bureaux, sur mer, á la tribune. Ou courrant á ton but; par un chemin plus bref, Vas, deviens général, et sois fripon en chef. FERLUS*. Revuc. Phil. Litter. et pol. 9, Fev. 1805. "Make your fortune, my son; think of nothing else; follow it up in the public offices, on the high seas, or in the courts of law; or arriving at the bourn by the shortest cut, turn general at once, and surpass all other scoundrels." General Wirion is a sharp, shrewd man, polite, and even affecting condescension. While some of the English would have turned into another street In the same satire, the author has the bold. ness to translate as follows: 66 "Dociles imitandis Turpibus ac pravis omnes sumus." Le crime est imité plutot que les vertus, in order to avoid him, others paid him the meanest court. When they met him on the promenade and bowed to him he returned their salute with the air of protection of a sovereign prince; but if any prisoner ventured to differ from him, he would bear no controul, but flew into the greatest passion. He conducted himself during the first months with propriety; but his moderation was only assumed; he was a cool-headed, designing scoundrel. Like Hamlet's uncle, he could smile, and smile, and be a villain. Had an order come down from Paris to have all the English marched out, and shot upon the parade, he probably would have executed it with the greatest sang froid; but the wolf soon let fall the sheep's clothing, and exposed his natural deformity. General Wirion was the son of a charcutier, or pork-dealer in Picardy; and though an attorney's clerk before the revolution, he, upon every occasion, affected a contempt for his antient calling. No ancient gentilhomme d'epce could have looked down with more fierté on an homme de robe than this Bow-street officer in regimentals did upon every civilian. When Mr. Christie had escaped out of the town, ""Tis clear," said Wirion, he is a lousy quill-driver; the ink is still sticking to his fingers' ends." A mulatto girl, born a slave in Jamaica, had attended her mistress to Verdun as waiting woman, but soon left her service, went upon the town, and was common to the whole depôt.— An Irish detenu had, in a moment of weakness, received a visit from her, and she swore to him the fruit of her promiscuous prostitution. This gentleman, conscious that he had no claims to the houors of paternity, consulted a French attorney, who answered, that no law in France could oblige him to support the child of a notorious prostitute. The girl applied to Wirion, who sent for the gentleman, but he pleaded the law in his favor. Wirion flew into a violent passion, told him that he was above law, that he had him in his power, that he could do with him what he pleased, and ordered him to pay forty louis down, and give a note of hand for forty louis more, payable in a year. He was at first desirous that the money should be deposited in his own hands; but this the gentleman, probably to the advantage of the girl, declined. This may give one an idea of French liberty, and French hospitality. When a French general declares himself above law, what must be the state of freedom in a country where there are five hundred generals. I will not discuss the point whether this gentleman ought to have supported the child or not; but he could |