s subject, will find in Mr.
Richards's treatise a candid description of the ill effects of
drunkenness, explained with a view to admonish, rather than to
censure the sufferer.

* * * * *

THE SELECTOR AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS

* * * * *

VIDOCQ

[In our vol. xii. we gave a few extracts from vol. i. of the _Memoirs of
Vidocq_, the principal agent of the French Police, until 1827; which
extracts we have reason to know were received with high _gout_ by most of
our readers. The second and third volumes of these extraordinary
adventures have just appeared, and contain higher-coloured depravities
than their predecessors. Some of them, indeed, might have been spared;
but as a graphic illustration of the petty thievery of Paris, the
following extract bears great merit:--]

I do not think that amongst the readers of these Memoirs one will be
found who, even by chance, has set foot at Guillotin's.

"Eh! what?" some one will exclaim, "Guillotin!"

Ce savant medecin
Que l'amour du prochain
Fit mourir de chagrin.

"You are mistaken; we all know the celebrated doctor, who ----;" but the
Guillotin of whom I am speaking is an unsophisticated adulterer of wines,
whose establishment, well known to the most degraded classes of robbers,
is situate opposite to the Cloaque Desnoyers, which the raff of the
Barriere call the drawing-room of la Courtille. A workman may be honest
to a certain extent, and venture in, _en passant_, to papa Desnoyers's.
If he be _awake_, and keep his eye on the company, although a row should
commence, he may, by the aid of the gendarmes, escape with only a few
blows, and pay no one's scot but his own. At Guillotin's he will not come
off so well, particularly if his _toggery_ be over spruce, and his
_pouch_ has _chink_ in it.

Picture to yourself, reader, a square room of considerable magnitude, the
walls of which, once white, have been blackened by every species of
exhalation. Such is, in all its simple modesty, the aspect of a temple
consecrated to the worship of Bacchus and Terpsichore. At first, by a
very natural optical illusion, we are struck by the confined space before
us, but the eye, after a time, piercing through the thick atmosphere of a
thousand vapours which are most inodorous, the extent becomes visible by
details which escape in the first chaotic glimpse. It is the moment of
creation, all