rials, is of opinion, that in this country,
terrible punishments ought to be avoided, or at least performed in
private. It is generally thought, that the horror of these punishments
deters the robber and murderer, and has a good effect on the multitude;
but I am afraid, said Mr L. B., that the multitude compassionate the
sufferer, and think the laws unjust: and experience shews, that
punishments, however horrid, do not deter the _hardened_ criminal. My
father, said he, filled the situation of judge in his native city. A
very young man, son of his baker, was convicted before the court, and
condemned to die, for robbery with murder. After sentence, my father
visited him, and asked him how he had been led to commit such a crime?
Since I was a child, said the boy, I have always been a thief. When at
school, I stole from my school-fellows,--when brought home, I stole from
my father and mother. I have long wished to rob on the high-way; the
fear of death did not prevent me. The worst kind of death is the rack,
but by going to see every execution, I have learnt to laugh even at the
rack. When young, it alarmed me, but habit has done away its terrors.

Mr L. B. is certainly a man of gentlemanly manners, and of much general
information. He is received at Aix in the first society of the old
nobility; and was, I afterwards found, reckoned a model of good
breeding, and yet, (which, in the present condition of French manners,
is by no means uncommon), I have frequently witnessed him, in general
company, introducing topics, and employing expressions, which, in our
country, would not have been tolerated for a moment, but must have been
considered an outrage to the established forms of good breeding.

The day after our conversation with Mr L. B. we received a visit from
the daughter of a Scotch friend, who is married to one of the first
counsellors here. We returned home with her to hear some music. We were
received in a very neat and very handsomely furnished house. The mother
and daughter appeared to us polite and elegant women. But I was
astonished to observe, seated on a sofa near them, a young man, whose
costume, contrasted with the ease and confidence of his manners, gave me
no small surprise. He wore an old torn great coat, a Belcher
handkerchief about his neck, a pair of, worn-out military trowsers,
stockings which had once been white, and shoes down in the heel. What my
astonishment to find this shabby looking object was a bro