rimerie, rue du Theatre-Francais, No. 4," is said to be by "Thomas
Paine, Citoyen et cultivateur de l'Amerique septentrionale, secretaire
du Congres du departement des affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre
d'Amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et LES
DROITS DE L'HOMME."

When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, Paine,
unwilling to participate in the decrees of a Convention whose sole legal
function was to frame a Constitution, retired to an old mansion
and garden in the Faubourg St. Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger, whose
researches in personal details connected with the Revolution are
original and useful, recently showed me in the National Archives
at Paris, some papers connected with the trial of Georgeit, Paine's
landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is not, as I had
supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to
the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. The
arrest of Georgeit is mentioned by Paine in his essay on "Forgetfulness"
(Writings, iii., 319). When his trial came on one of the charges was
that he had kept in his house "Paine and other Englishmen,"--Paine
being then in prison,--but he (Georgeit) was acquitted of the paltry
accusations brought against him by his Section, the "Faubourg du Nord."
This Section took in the whole east side of the Faubourg St. Denis,
whereas the present No. 63 is on the west side. After Georgeit (or
Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in the large mansion
(said by Rickman to have been once the hotel of Madame de Pompadour),
and it would appear, by his account, that it was after the execution
(October 31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins, and political comrades,
that he felt his end at hand, and set about his last literary bequest
to the world,--"The Age of Reason,"--in the state in which it has since
appeared, as he is careful to say. There was every probability, during
the months in which he wrote (November and December 1793) that he would
be executed. His religious testament was prepared with the blade of
the guillotine suspended over him,--a fact which did not deter pious
mythologists from portraying his death-bed remorse for having written
the book.

In editing Part I. of "The Age of Reason," I follow closely the first
edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the manuscript, no
doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on
his way to th