VIDOCQ.

Some very pleasant blunderer is said to have declared Moore's Life of
Sheridan to be the best piece of _Autobiography_ he had ever read; and with
little more propriety can the concluding volume of _Vidocq's Memoirs_ be
said to belong to that species of literature styled Autobiography. The
early volumes, however, possessed this feature, but the present is little
more than a criminal supplement to the Memoirs. Of this defect, the
translator seems to be aware; for in his "Sequel," he says, instead of the
important disclosures promised by the Police Agent, in vol. ii., "he has
given us a nomenclature of the assassins, thieves, and swindlers of France,
and no more." He has merely brought down his Memoirs to the year 1816, and
eked out his fourth volume with anecdotes and counsels, which have in most
cases, more interest than novelty to recommend them. Still they are worth
reading, although of a different character to the scenes, or as a wag would
say, the "concerted pieces" which we have quoted from the three previous
volumes. Our present quotations will not therefore possess the interest of
complicated schemes.

At page 34, Vidocq awards to our metropolis, no very desirable
distinction--

_Town and Country Thieves._

"No capital in the world, London excepted, has within it so many thieves as
Paris. The pavement of the modern Lutetia is incessantly trodden by rogues.
It is not surprising; for the facility of hiding them in the crowd makes
all that are badly disposed resort thither, whether French or foreign. The
greater number are fixed constantly in this vast city; some only come like
birds of passage, at the approach of great occasions, or during the summer
season. Besides these exotics, there are indigenous plants, which make a
fraction in the population, of which the denominator is tolerably high. I
leave to the great calculator, M. Charles Dupin, the task of enumerating
them in decimals, and telling us if the sum that it amounts to should not
be taken into consideration in the application of the black list."

_False Keys._

"Cambrioleurs are plunderers of rooms, either by force or with false keys.
There are of this class thieves of incredible effrontery; that of one
Beaumont almost surpasses belief. Escaped from the Bagne at Rochefort,
where he was sentenced to pass twelve years of his life, he came to Paris,
and scarcely had he arrived there, where he had already practised, when, by
way of get