Rev.

EGYPTIAN RATIONS.

The rations of the Egyptian soldiers were, according to Herodotus, five pounds of baked bread, two pounds of beef, and half a pint of wine daily.

In the barbarous ages it was usual for persons who could not write, to make the sign of the cross in confirmation of a written paper. Several charters still remain in which kings and persons of great eminence affix "signum crucis pro ignoratione literarum," the sign of the cross, because of their ignorance of letters. From this is derived the phrase of signing instead of subscribing a paper.

COLUMN IN BLENHEIM PARK

(To the Editor of the Mirror.)

You have lately directed the attention of the readers of the MIRROR to the park of Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, one of the most beautiful England can boast of, and likewise, according to Camden, the first park that was made in this country. I can bear witness to the correctness of your delineation and description of Rosamond's Well, which you gave in a recent number; but there is no trace whatever of the bower or labyrinth, the site of which is only pointed out by tradition. The park of Blenheim, besides the interest which attaches to it from the circumstance of its having been the residence of the early kings of England, and the scene of "Rosamond's" life, has in more modern times acquired additional interest from having been bestowed by the country upon the Duke of Marlborough, in testimony of the gratitude of the nation for the brilliant services he had rendered his country, particularly at the battle of Blenheim.

It was a reward at once worthy of the English nation and of the illustrious hero on whom it was bestowed; and as it is at least pleasing, and perhaps useful, to recall to the mind the epochs of England's greatness amongst nations, I have sent a sketch of one of the most prominent objects in the park of Blenheim, which our forefathers deemed (in the language of the inscription) would "stand as long as the British name and language last, illustrious monuments of Marlborough's glory and of Britain's gratitude." This is an elegant column, 130 feet in height, and surmounted by a statue of the warrior in an antique habit. On three sides of the building there are nearly complete copies of the several Acts of Parliament by which the park and manor of Woodstock were granted to the Duke of Marlborough and his heirs; and on the fourth side is a very long inscription, said to have been penned by Lord Bolingbroke, which concludes thus:—

G.W.

THE SELECTOR AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

MEMOIRS OF VIDOCQ.

This is as full-charged a portrait of human depravity as the gloomiest misanthrope could wish for. But it has much wider claims on public attention than the gratification of the misanthropic few who mope in corners or stalk up and down leafless and almost solitary walks during this hanging and drowning season. Nevertheless, all men are more or less misanthropes, or they affect to be so; for only skim off the bile of a true critic, or the minds of the hundred thousand who read newspapers, and look first for the bankrupts and deaths. Sugar and wormwood and wormwood and sugar are the standing dishes, but as we read the other day, "there is a certain hankering for the gloomy side of nature, whence the trials and convictions of vice become so much more attractive than the brightest successes of virtue." People with macadamized minds, and their histories (scarce as the originals are) are mere nonentities, and food for the trunk-maker; whereas a book of hair-breadth escapes, thrilling with horror and romantic narrative will tempt people to sit up reading in their beds, till like Rousseau, they are reminded of morning by the stone-chatters at their window. To the last class belong the Memoirs of Vidocq, an analysis of which would be "utterly impossible, so powerful are the descriptions, and so continuous the thread of their history." The original work was published a short time since in Paris, and republished here; but, we believe the present is the first translation that has appeared in England. The newspapers have, from time to time, translated a few extracts, when their Old Bailey news was at a stand, so that the name of Vidocq must be somewhat familiar to many of our readers.¹¹

Eugene Francois Vidocq is a native of Arras, where his father was a baker; and from early associations he fell into courses of excess which led to the necessity of his flying from the parental roof. After various, rapid, and unexampled events in the romance of real life, in which he was everything by turns and nothing long, he was liberated from prison, and became the principal and most active agent of police. He was made Chief of the Police de Surete under Messrs. Delavau and Franchet, and continued in that capacity from the year 1810 till 1827, during which period he extirpated the most formidable of those ruffians and villains to whom the excesses of the revolution and subsequent events had given full scope for the perpetration of the most daring robberies and inquitous excesses. Removed from employment, in which he had accumulated a handsome independence, he could not determine on leading a life of ease, for which his career of perpetual vigilance and adventure had unfitted him, and he built a paper manufactory at St. Mandeé, about two leagues from Paris, where he employs from forty to fifty persons, principally, it is asserted, liberated convicts, who having passed through the term of their sentence, are cast upon society without home, shelter, or character, and would be compelled to resort to dishonest practices did not this asylum offer them its protection and afford them opportunity of earning an honest living by industrious labour. One additional point of interest in the present volume is, that the author is still living.

[We cannot follow Vidocq through his career of crime, neither would it be altogether profitable to our readers; but the links may be recapitulated in a few words. He must have been born a thief, and perhaps stole the spoon with which he was fed; but the penchant runs in the family, for Vidocq and his brother rob the same till of a fencing-room, but his brother is first detected, and sent off "in a hurry," to a baker at Lille. Of course Vidocq soon gets partners in sin, and on the same day that he has been detected by the living evidence of two fowls which he had stolen, he sweeps from the dinner table ten forks and as many spoons, pawns them for 150 francs, spends the money in a few hours, and is imprisoned four days. He is then released; one of his pals gives