"AN ACCOMPLISHED VILLAIN."

WE print the following from the newspapers-(it originally appeared in Galignani)-as it affectingly illustrates the sad truth that society too often sins more iniquitously against the individual, than the individual errs against society.

AN ACCOMPLISHED VILLAIN.-An offender is now in the hands of justice whose history presents a series of acts of address in wrong-doing which have been rarely paralleled. This delinquent, by name Rioustel, was born of respectable parents, and received a good education. He was placed as a clerk in a merchant's house, in the Rue St. Denis, and was conducting himself with perfect satisfaction to his employer, when he was drawn for a soldier, and, being unable to purchase a substitute, was sent to join the 29th regiment. Disgusted with the hardships and restraints of a soldier's life, he deserted. Not daring to assume his old station in society, and becoming destitute, he committed a forgery, and, being detected, was condemned to imprisonment for five years at Melun. Discharged in the year 1832, he was at the end of that year recognised by the police as a deserter, tried by a court-martial, and sentenced to hard labour in the Island of Oleron for seven years. After remaining there two years he effected his escape, and remained at liberty till 1842, when he was once more arrested for a robbery, which he was driven to commit from not being able to find any honest mode of earning his livelihood. He was once more condemned to five years' incarceration, which, however, he endured for only two months, when he again escaped. A second unfortunate chance placed him before the military authorities, who sent him to the prison of the Abbaye, in Paris. Here, after a little time, he feigned illness with such effect that he was removed to the hospital of the Val de Grâce. On entering this establishment his first and only thought was how to get away from it. His malady seemed to increase, until he took to his bed, and pretended that he was assured he should never leave the house alive. By his mild and apparently resigned manners and conduct he gained the favour and confidence of the person in charge of the infirmary, who used to sit up with him. On the 22nd of November, 1843, he accomplished another evasion in the following way-Having, by means hitherto undiscovered, procured and concealed in his bed a bottle of brandy, he seduced his friend the keeper to drink so much of it that he became dead drunk. In this state Rioustel took off the man's upper garments, and clothed himself with them, laying their owner in his own place in bed. Then assuming the gait and appearance of the deluded keeper, he walked unmolested out of the hospital, and was no more heard of until Friday last, when he was arrested on coming out of a jeweller's shop in the Rue de Cléry, on a charge of having stolen a bank note for 1000f. from M. Thoré, director of the Government granary at La Villette. Since he has this last time been in custody, whether from conviction that his case had become hopeless, or from bravado, he has been very communicative, and given

the details of his whole career. In addition to the above, he has avowed himself to have been the person who in March last, as we related at the time, enticed the young actress of the Théatre de Variétés from her residence in the Cité Trésvise, and having seated her in a coffee-house, left her under a feigned pretence, hurried back to her lodgings, sent her femme de chambre to seek her mistress at another place where she was sure not to find her; and having thus got both out of the way, robbed the apartment of all the deceived actress's jewels and other valuables. He it was also who, towards the close of the last winter, at a ball, made an acquaintance with a young man, who after they had supped together, invited Rioustel to his own apartment, to finish the night over a goblet of fine old rum sent him as a present from Jamaica, of which the unsuspicious host took so much himself that he fell fast asleep, and his guest took French leave of him, carrying away a valuable diamond pin, a gold watch and chain, and 200f. in money. This trick, also, we gave an account of when it was played. Rioustel, in making this confession, took some credit to himself for forbearance, saying, that there were 400f. in the drawer from which he took the 200f. but he left half, remembering that quarter-day was near at hand, and he could not distress the young man so far as to leave him without the means of paying his rent.

And this unhappy, outraged man, the newspaper moralist dubs "an accomplished villain.' Let us test Rioustel's villany by the morality of the society he has offended. Here is a man of good education, honourably employed in a merchant's house. Not a breath of suspicion taints the purity of his character: on the contrary, he conducts himself with perfect satisfaction to his employer. Well, it pleases the state to select this honourable, punctual merchant's clerk for a man-killer. He must be turned into a soldier. He must forego his tranquil pursuits; must yield up his personal independence, his moral dignity, and become a musket and ball-cartridge-bearing machine of flesh and blood; an automaton in uniform, to be wound up to commit any of war's goodly works of fire and slaughter. There is no help for poor Rioustel-none. He has no money to buy a vicarious victim, so must he shoulder arms, and fall in with the 29th regiment. Thus, the man is first stolen from himself the merchant's clerk is first robbed of his priceless liberty by the moral, the honest state. Well, after bearing with "the hardships and restraints" of a soldier's life, until life becomes insupportable-and who shall coldly count the mental agonies, the hours of anguish, of loathing and disgust endured by the condemned slave of the musket?-Rioustel escapes; and so commences his career of "accomplished villany."

The deserter, who has endeavoured to obtain back the liberty of which he was deprived by the state, is now free; and free to starve. He cannot assume his old station in society." No:

the state has prevented that. Still, the escaped wretch must eat; must now and then have a roof to cover him. He is not allowed to reseat himself at the merchant's desk, and humbly ply his quill for humble bread; so he turns his pen to forgery, is detected, and imprisoned for five years at Melun. The gaol was, no doubt, an excellent academy for the tuition of accomplished villany: there, no doubt, he learnt the mastery of his art-there he was armed at all points against the respectable well-doers of the world without. However, at length discharged, glory is no longer cheated of her runaway of her felon soldier, who would fain steal back his freedom from the robber state-no; he is caught, tried, and sentenced to hard labour for seven years. He serves two; his whole being possessed with no other sense than that of the tremendous wrong that snatched him from his peaceful path of life, and at length made him an outcast-a human wild beast, to prey upon and be hunted by all men. He again escapes. It is France. The deserter has no papers who will employ him? At this very moment are there not in harlot Paris thousands of desperate wretches-discharged convicts-who, if willing to win honest bread, are not permitted to make the endeavour; for they have no papers, and therefore know it is in vain to solicit employment. What is the inevitable result? Day and night they plunge deeper and deeper into guilt human life they hold not at the cost of a five franc piece. They rob and murder-as the dismal Morgue will bear witness and become "accomplished villains, "the pious, virtuous state lamenting the backsliding of the children she may have first wronged-then corrected-and finally sent forth to starve.

To return to Rioustel. He again robs. That slow fire, withering his vitals, makes him steal the means of life-the means denied to virtuous exertion. He is again imprisoned, again escapes; and after further robberies is at this moment fast in gaol. We are told that "he took some credit to himself for forbearance," for not leaving his host penniless, as he could not distress the young man so far as to leave him without the means of paying his rent." To us there is something affecting in this forbearance of the thief: for it proves, past contradiction, that the man, throughout all his career of injury and vice, had maintained one untainted spot of heart; that he was not all callous-that in his nature, corrupt and hardened as it was, there was still a pulse of gratitude, a sense of kindness. We have no doubt that some good conventional folks may stare, when we assert our deliberate opinion that there have

been men, ministers of state in merry England, wholly incapable of the partial generosity of the robber Rioustel: men whose base ingratitude to their helpers, places them infinitely below the Paris thief. We repeat it: we deliberately assert this. If the reader desire proof, we confidently refer him to Horace Walpole's Memoirs of George the Third. He will there find worse than Rioustels, and they, too, starred and gartered.

And Rioustel" is an accomplished villain!" Reader, be with us for a moment, on the Paris Bourse. Look at the throng of merchants of money-brokers. Excellent men!-men whose word is current as minted gold. Now, who shall say that, if Rioustel had not been dragged from his clerk's desk to be manufactured into a soldier, he might not have been one of these trading, monied worthies-an upright, excellent, and respected man? Again, pick out any one of these sleek and thriving traders, and say, if in his youth he had been stolen for the army, he might not have been at this moment the newspapers' plished villain,"-another Rioustel?

accom

Accomplished villain!" An easy, virtuous phrase: but how often is it with a state and its offenders, as with Tom Thumb and the giants,—it makes the villains first, and then it kills them!

D. J.

THE ENGLISHMAN IN PRUSSIA.-No. V.

CHARACTERISTICS.-MANNERS.-CUSTOMS.

WE heard one day in a university town that there was a fire' in an adjacent village. Rushing out to make for the place, we observed a number of German gentlemen and students walking towards the same village, with their pipes in their mouths, at their usual pace, and engaged in easy conversation; and presently we saw a fire-engine issue from the town-gates, drawn by one horse, who leisurely trotted all the way to the fire.

Ludwig Börne, in his "Gesammelte Schriften," has the following observation upon his countrymen :—

Germans attain an end more slowly than other people, be it in art, knowledge, or in civic life. Not, perhaps, that they do not know the shortest way, or that they wander indolently astray; they have merely

a longer course to the end because they start from a greater distance. They go over all the principles; and if a spot of grease is to be taken out of a coat-sleeve, they previously study chemistry, and study so long, and so fundamentally, that the coat, meantime, falls to rags. But this is just the thing for them; out of rags is made writing-paper. They make paper out of all things.-Fragmente und Aphorismen. No. 234.

Certainly this writer well understood the character of his countrymen. The true German mind, and especially the highest order of their minds, has an inevitable tendency to the vain attempt of exhausting a subject from beginning to end, and including all subjects that branch out from the main root of their study. Now, this thing cannot be done. Any science and art, if followed out, runs into nearly every other science and art; and the same may be said of every system of philosophy or theology. All these things cannot be thoroughly studied by one man-no one life is long enough for it. But a German thinks it is; and, supported by this belief, and his own devoted enthusiasm, he generally contrives to live, at all events, a long life, and to attain great knowledge in many departments of his given subject. As for hard work,-no labour, however arduous, or of whatever probable duration, in the least daunts his spirit, but rather seems to add a zest to the hopeful vigour with which he commences and prosecutes his undertaking. Need we say after this that he has an inexhaustible love of writing? He will write you any number of folios upon any collateral feather of the subject he has set his soul upon, until the feather has put forth so many shoots that they become wings, and perhaps cause him to fly off for years from his "great work." His ideas are numerous, and often quite original; and he is apt to ground a fresh speculation and theory upon every new idea which he considers important. His love of order, arrangement, and systematic details and elaborations, and subtle distinctions and distributions, are carried to a wonderful extent. Hear Ludwig Börne again :—

We can arrange our thoughts (we Germans, he means) as we do the objects of physical nature: they stand on higher or lower degrees, like stones, plants, animals. We have mineral ideas, vegetable ideas, and animal ideas. The German ideas are so costly, they err as to life. A diamond is worth more than an ox; but an ox lives.—Fragmente und Aphorismen. No. 202.

Figurative as these expressions may appear, they literally describe the fact. The Germans have all sorts of ideas from all sorts of "kingdoms; " they take the same pains in discovering, and