THE MEMOIRS OF M. YIDOCCe.

THE autobiography of a thief-taker, himself a transported convict, does not at first sight present the highest claims to the attention of the literary world : nevertheless, M. VIDOCQ Will be enrolhal in the memoirs of all time, as one of the most extraordinary characters of his age,—NAPOLEON and Vinoco must go down to posterity together ; and the history of his life will +she its rank among those standard works which by tha charm of style, the force of truth, and the interest of the subject, win continue to give pleasure independently of the fluctuating fashions and tastes of mankind. The passions of men are always the same : those details of the solitary existence of Robinaun Ormroe, which interested our grandfathers when boys, continue to enchain the breathless attention of our grandchildren. ViDoccs will be talked of by virtue of his book, when many very great people of the present day are only to be heard of in Biographical Dictionaries. If our readers wish to conceive an accurate notion of it, they must imagine something between the Life of fumes Hardy Faux and the Memoirs of Baron Trench. Vinoco, it is true, was free from the criminality of the former person, and wanted the political importance of the latter ; nevertheless we possess, even in the first parts of VIDOCQ now published, the interest of both. If we mentioned also in conjunction with the Memoirs of VIDOCQ, the Adventures of Count Entkom and the History of Jonathan ;Hid, we should be introducing an idea of fiction, which would he wrong ; but. undoubtedly, had we a small shelf containing RobinNon Cru4oe, Count Tuthill, James Hardy Vamv, Jonathan Wild, Lazurillo its 'Formes, Baron Trenck, and Roderick Random, we should add to the goodly crew the Autobiography of Francis Vidocq. A philosopher who looked upon mankind without reference to *11.16moires tie Vidocq, Chef Sc la Police de Suret,1 jusqu'en 1827 aujourinwl, eroprietaire et fabrivaut de par ices it Saint-Kande. Ptiris, Win :ivy, the arbitrary distinctions of society, would not hesitate to say that VIDOCQ was a man of consummate genius, in a line too which requires for its exercise the possession of consummate courage. If it Were that an impregnable integrity is also required, and that the proof that VIDOCQ is honest rests solely on his own evidence, we should answer that nothing is to be done without enthusiasm : it generally accompanies genius, and where it exists, the possessor is ready to make any sacrifice for the sake of the full gratification of his passion. VIDOCQ was, and probably is, though he has just broken his arm, a man possessed of every advantage of personal prowess, strength, and form : combined with this, he had excellent talents, and a wonderful aptitude at changing his appearance, and supporting any character he chose to assume. While he was a prisoner, he employed these accomplishments in effecting his escapes—no prison could hold him : while an agent of police, he employed them in detecting knavery and in securing criminals—no rogue could evade him. For fifteen years he waged a war against the rascals of France, in his own person and almost unassisted by other resources. He assumed all dis, guises, played all characters : in the morning he was a general officer, in the evening a coal-porter ; now he would be a thief, skulking in holes or corners ; and then a venerable character advanced in age, measuring his paces slowly in the more respectable and quiet parts or the city : he has joined as a housebreaker in midnight robberies, and been apparently shot dead by the police AVIIOM he had brought to the spot : he has been made the confident of plots against his own life, and in another character has actually assisted in their execution. Vigilance, dexterity, invention, courage, humanity, and integrity, were the qualities required ; and we are almost afraid to say, that, simply on his own showing, we believe that after he arrived at manhood and an official character, he possessed them all. It is certainly a worthy close of his career, and consistent with the opinion we entertain of him, that he has now, after fifteen years of service, established a kind of philanthropical manufactory, where I iLl employs none but returned convicts,—aware as he is, that the erand cause of continued crime in such men is that they are rejected of all the world, and that in order to exist, they must resort to the only profession open to them, that of robbery.

We will follow as well as we can the early stages of the history of VIDOCQ: when he comes to the exercise of his ultimate profession, we must leave him, for every page is a history, which would lose all its interest in an abridgment.

ViDoco was born at Arras : his father was a baker there. On hina and his mother Vinocn practised his lint irregularities. -When a boy, he stole the money from the till ; when it was locked he forged a pewter key, and continued his depredations ; and at length made an end of these petty robberies by a grand attack on the escritoir, which, in conjunction with slime juvenile accomplices, he broke open, and took to -flight with its contents. Seeking a passage in some vessel at Ostend, he was decoyed by a sharper in the character of a ship-broker, to a house of ill fame ; where he was stripped of the whole results of his crime, and cast almost naked into the streets. He was then introduced to the keeper of a travelling menagerie and chief of a company of rope-dancers. His first occupation was cleaning the lamps and wooden chandeliers: he then had to look after the occasions of the apes and monkeys, until he was transferred to the head tumbler as a pupil. He was nearly starved to death, his clothes were in rags, and Ids joints almost dislocated, when, perceiving. himself ill -calculated for a fumbler, and taking to heart the breakfast of hard blows which was the only one he ever got, he suggested to his chief that he wished to leave his service. His answer was a serious bastinado : but at length, having rebelled against eating a live cock in the character of a wild man of the woods, and snatched up a knife to defend himself against the merited correction, he was turned out of the camp as a dangerous person. The keeper of a puppat-show, and his young wife, taking some interest in his situation, Im became their assistant in moving the puppets behind the cam ass ; when one day thellusband, finding the puppet s at a stand-still, lifted up the curtain, and flew into so great a rage at what he there beheld, that he overturned the show in the middle of the ceowd, beat his wile, and scarcely gave M. Vinocn time to discharge himself. After carrying the pack. of a pedlar and conjurer some time (for, though not more than fifteen or sixteen, the appearance of VIDOCQ gave indications of that powerful frame nineh has since struck terror into the heart of SO many irregular livers,) and becoming disgusted and ashamed at making a part of the pedam's display in the marketplace of Lille, he took leave of the peed:man, and returned in woful condition, a prodigal son, to pray the forgiveness of his parents at Arras.

His father -soon became convinced, by some farther escapades, that there were small hopes of making a respectable tradesman of his son, and willingly gave consent to his entering the army. He inlisted in the regiment of Bourbon; where his address, person, and skill in the management of the sword, soon transferred him to a company of c;maecuess—a promotion which oanded sonic old soldiers: two of them he sent futile hospital ; and being very soon afterwards wounded by one of their comrades, he followed them there. It was nut long before he had fought fifteen duels, and killed two men : this prowess got him the name of Sans Gte, (DoN'T CARE,) by which Ile was known in the regiment. In the ensuing contest \vitt' Austria, he was with the army when the unfortunate General DILLON was massacred ; and served against the Peussians under KELLERNAN, in " the army of internals," He was made corporal ; but in " wetting his stripes'. with his comrades at the cantine, he challenged his sergeant-major ; and fearing the

consequences of a council of war, he deserted along with his second. At Vitry, he and his companion were reinlisted as raw recruits, and were sent off to Philippeville to the depot: He had not been there two days before he took part in the battle of Je mappes, in which he distinguished himself. At the close of the engagement, his Captain took an opportunity of telling him that he had been pointed out as a deserter, and advised him to take care of himself. The danger was imminent, and he galloped over to the Austrians : in ten minutes he had demanded service in the regiment of Kinski, in which he was enrolled. Pretending illness, he thus avoided meeting his countrymen in the field, and got an opportunity of teaching fencing at Louvain. This profitable employ ment was interrupted by a quarrel ; for his conduct in which,

VIDOCQ was condemned to receive twenty strokes of schlag : this schlag wounded his honour as well as his back, and VIDOCQ once

more taking to flight, set off for Landrecies ; where presenting himself as a Belgian, deserted from the Austrians, he became once more a French soldier. He entered the Fourteenth Light Infantry, then proceeding to join the army of the Sambre and Meuse. As they entered Rocroi, whom should he see but some soldiers of his old regiment the Second Chasseurs ! He thought himself lost, and ex pected nothing less than to be led out and shot ; when his old Captain came to bid him be of good cheer. An amnesty had been passed, and he wished to have him again under his orders. VIDOCQ, in whom the Captain had taken an interest from having seen him cut down a couple of German hussars, entered once more the Second Chasseurs. Being unhappily, and unjustly as he says, suspected of being concerned in some thefts, he was acquitted of the charge : the affair, however, caused so many duels between himself and his comrades, whose honour was touched that one of the Second Chasseurs should be suspected even, that VIDOCQ was advised by his officers to leave the regiment for a while on furlough. He returned to Arras with leave for six months. Being wounded in the retreat from Givet, he was laid up for some time in the hospital ; after which he removed into the German Legion, at that time composed almost entirely of deserters, fencing-masters, &c. &c. : in which, however, promotion was extremely rapid ; and VIDOCQ would have been an officer, had not his wound broke out afresh, and compelled him to retire to Arras once more.

VIDOCQ found the guillotine in great request in his native town: the famous JOSEPH LEBON presided over its operations. On entering the fish-market of Arras, he saw the execution of the commandant of the town.

"The first sight which met my view was the guillotine raising its red planks above a silent crowd : an old man, whom they had just finished tying to the fatal block, was the victim. All of a sudden, I heard a flourish of trumpets. On a stage which overlooked the orchestra, a man was seated, still young, clothed in the habit of a Carmelite, with blue and black stripes. Though his manners were rather those of a monk than a soldier, he leaned with an air of carelessness on the sabre of a dragoon, the enormous guard of which represented a cap of liberty ; a brace of pistols adorned his belt; and his hat, turned up in the Spanish fashion, was surmounted with a tricoloured plume. This was Joseph Lebon. At the moment I espied him, his mean face was lighted up with a horrid smile : he ceased to beat time with his left foot, and the trumpets stopped: he made a sign, and the old man was put under the knife. A kind of town -bailiff, half drunk, was at the side of the revenger of the people; and read, in a hoarse voice, the bulletin of the army of the Rhine and Moselle. At the end of each paragraph, the orchestra struck up ; and when the reading was finished, the head of the unfortunate man fell, to the cry of Vive la Republique ! ' repeated by some of the disciples of the ferocious Lebon. The person executed was M. de Mongou, former commandant of the citadel of Arras."

VIDOCQ having challenged a rival in the affections of a young person of Arras, was denounced by his antagonist as an Aristocrat. The son of the baker found himself in prison, confounded among a crowd of that unfortunate class, and narrowly escaped being sent out with some one of the batches continually ordered for execution. JOSEPH LEBON, however, one day made himself the tour of the prison, and was far too much of a Republican to suffer one of the people to remain in a gaol full of Aristocrats. After being led to the society of patriots, where he swore all kinds of enmity against tyrants, VIDOCQ was enrolled in a battalion of requisition formed at Arras. For his conduct in an engagement with the Austrians near Stinward, he received the felicitations of General VANDAMME : he had previously been presented with a commission. When the battalion was broken shortly after, VIDOCQ returned to Arras, and married a wife; whose only charm seems to have been, that her brother, a notary, was in favour with the Revolutionary authorities. She quickly gave him reason to repent, and the couple parted. VIDOCQ betook himself to Brussels, and seems to have lived there solely by his reputation for skill in arms. By attending and looking on at the gamingtables, he became a frequent witness of the tricks of the sharpers

and gamesters by profession : as these gentlemen were afraid to attack him, they feed him as well as others with a daily allowance, in order to keep him from informing the dupes of the manner in which they had been taken in. From this not very honourable state of existence; VIDOCQ was promoted to a commission in the

armee roulante. By means of forged papers and orders of route,

in those times of confusion, an immense number of persons contrived to live upon the frontier provinces and the newly. conquered

countries ; travelling as officers, and drawing their pay and receiving their billets from the different war-office commissioners, with all the regularity imaginable. The system and extent of this description of fraud are truly extraordinary. While serving in the armee roulante, VinoeQ captivated the affections of a wealthy baroness upon whom he was quartered, and who was completely

blinded by the pretensions of VIDOCQ and his brother officers. Some remains of conscience, and perhaps the reflection that the abode of the Baroness was too near that of his wife, induced VIDOCQ to confess the fraud to the lady on the very eve of the in tended marriage. The considerable sums which accrued from this affair enabled the adventurer to proceed and try his luck at Paris. Here one woman deprived him of all that another had given ; and VIDOCQ was compelled to leave the capital completely destitute. He seems to have lived at Lille some short time ; and we hear of a brief but extraordinary connexion with the gipsies. A trifling irregularity threw him into the gaol of Lille, where he occupied an apartment : this apartment was borrowed by some prisoners to draw up a petition : instead of a petition, they were occupied in forging an order of liberation, by the aid of which one of them was set at large : with this offence Vinoco was mixed up—innocently, he declares : at any rate he was found guilty ; and thus commenced the series of his sorrows, sufferings, and exploits.

Finding that his stay in prison was likely to be long, VIDOCQ pondered upon the means of escape, and began for the first time to draw upon the bold and inventive genius which subsequently rendered him so famous. He assumed the dress and guise of the officer of the town, whose duty it was to visit the prison weekly; and walked straight out of the gate ; the turnkey, a man exceedingly conceited of his own penetration, opening the wicket, cap in hand. Three months VIDOCQ was concealed in the apartment of a female with whom he had for some time had a connexion ; but becoming impatient of restraint, he took a walk in the air, and was again arrested, and again escaped. In a fit of jealousy, FRANCINE, the woman in question, covered herself with wounds, and accused VIDOCQ of an attempt at assassination: so that he was sent back to prison with the charge of an attempt to murder, added to that of forgery. He again escapes, is again taken, and a third time escapes. The details do credit to his ingenuity, perseverance, and presence of mind. In one instance, he employed in his escape a false key, the model of which he took with a large carrot ; he then made a mould of paste, formed of bread and potatoes : the prisoners were allowed pewter spoons—a fire was obtained from a lamp fabricated of some lard and the threads of a cotton nightcap ; thus was the pewter melted into the mould, and a tolerable key produced ; which, after numerous touches and retouches, was found to answer the purpose of opening the lock for which it was devised. After incredible preparations, and when every thing was charged for an immediate escape, the gaoler entered to inform M. VIDOCQ that his time for confinement in the dungeon was expired, and that he must follow him to a more airy and convenient apartment. His congratulations fell upon the ear of his prisoner like a condemnation of death. It is remarkable, that after all he availed himself of his previous labours. The two fellow prisoners who had shared his attempt, and whom he left behind in the dun geon, took the opportunity of taking an immediate leave ; using the false key, and passing by a hole which had been bored in the wall. This hole was to be repaired : when the workmen came, Vinoccz put on his hat, the tri-coloured ribbon, and bound some more round his waist, after the fashion of the Revolutionary municipal officers : marching up to the guards placed at the hole, he examined it,—saying that he did not think it large enough for the body of a man to pass through : he ascended the ladder to try, and practically proved to the gaping sentinels below, that nothing could be more easy. From Lille VIDOCQ went to Courtrai ; and was employed by a company of rope-dancers and pantomimic actors : the clown, however, for some reason denounced him, and he was soon restored to his prison at Lute; and thence transferred to Douai, with the character of a dangerous person. Here he and two fellow prisoners dug under their dungeon, intending to work under the walls until they came to the banks of the river Scarpe, which flows past the gaol : unfortunately they dug too deep, and the water flowed in upon them through the hole, and they were obliged to call to the gaoler and turnkeys for help to save them from being drowned. Being foiled in some other attempts equally laborious and hardy, a fellow prisoner, DESFOSSEUX, a fellow of extraordinary qualities, drew forth from his intestines, where he always preserved it, a small case of minute saws : with these he cut the

irons of the party : when the gaoler entered, he found his prisoners unencumbered : a search was made—no instrument was found: heavy irons were again secured upon them, and they were chained to gether: again the irons were cut to pieces. and again the authorities were puzzled : at last the prisoners were simply locked up carefully, and soon took an opportunity of making their escape. Four days afterwards,Vi o cca was at Compeigne, enrolled in a regiment of black hussars ; where he might have perhaps pursued his career as a sol dier, had he not unfortunately encountered a gendarme in the place of Guise, who knew him, and took him off to prison without ceremony. After several more adventures of this kind, VIDOCQ is sent from Douai to the Bictdre at Paris, to wait the departure of the convicts for the galleys. The convicts revolt on the route, and several are slain and wounded : the rest being secured, and among them VIDOCQ, they are safely deposited in the

Bictltre. Here is a new theatre both for the enterprises of the ready hand of VIDOCQ and for the descriptions of his graphic pen. He is unsuccessful in his attempts at escape, and sets out with the chain of convicts to the hulks at Brest. The march is conducted with all the gaiety of a gaol,—the wit and merriment that mark the language and behaviour of men dead to all sense of shame. The officers who conduct them are of course adapted to the nature of the business, and all parties really seem to enjoy their horrid condition. The only thing the lieutenants look to is security of person; every description of vice consistent with that is almost encouraged : the slightest disobedience, however, is instantly punished with brutality : so that the whole procession is a series of trick, violence, merriment, and imprecation. They sing and swear in chorus ; they spend with recklessness, and now tell the tale of their crimes : as the only source of consequence, a new order of rank is established among them, and the baser the man and the blacker his crimes, the greater is his merit : even the commanders of the troops enjoy their atrocity, and take a pride in leading to their destination men who have excelled all others in a particular line. Did the French excel as our painters do in their pictures of manners, we would recommend to them, as an admirable subject for the pencil, the Departure of the Chain. Mr. HAVDON would find it worth his while to add another picture to the two he has already so well executed in his new line of art. The subject is not so pleasant a one as that of Chaucer's Pilgrims, it is true ; but perhaps it is both more striking and more instructive.

A second epoch of Vinoco's life now commences, at the age of twenty-two years, the period when he entered the galleys. He had been condemned for an offence of no extraordinary turpitude ; and, with all his constrained fellowship with the greatest of criminals, he had never 'committed another crime. He had, however, become familiar with every species of atrocity, and acquainted with all possible modes of perpetrating offences and evading the punishment. Apparently gifted with considerable powers of reasoning and observation, he saw that the career of the criminal was both brief and unhappy ; and he had resolved to begin life afresh, in the hope of a long and peaceable enjoyment. Had he quietly served his time at the hulks, he would probably have earlier in life commenced respectable citizen ; but conscious of extraordinary powers of invention and of great personal strength, he soon began again his perpetual struggle with his keepers. At the galleys, every preparation is made to render escape difficult if not impossible : at the Bicetre, on the contrary, invention and industry are kept on the stretch to render it practicable. The head is invariably kept shaved in the hulks, that an escaped convict may Le readily detected ; whereas at the Ilicittre cases are manufactured and sold, each of which contain a wig, and so small that it may be secreted in the intestines. By the aid of such and other contrivances, VIDOCQ escapes from the galleys at Brest, arrives at Paris, and passes to Arras. He commences several modes of life, from which he is always driven by the apprehension of being detected as a convict returned from the galleys. Eventually he is rearrested,and departs with another chain,t his time for Toulon. Thence again he escapes ; and leads a strange but still a respectable course of life ; for though never free from the dread of arrest, and constantly obliged to skulk in the receptacles of thieves, yet he never supports himself by criminal means, and is perpetually attempting to establish himself in an honest livelihood. At last he is denounced; and contrives to avert his fate by connecting himself with the secret police. Then commences the third stage of M. VIDOCQ'S life.

The previous part of his life had well fitted him for an agent of police : no one so well acquainted as he with the ways of criminals ; and his numerous bold enterprises had given him a reputation among them, which he did not fail to turn to account in various ways. His facility in disguising himself, and the ability with which he could support any character from the highest to the lowest, also gave him immense advantages : he became in himself a host, and singly did more for the security of property in Paris than the whole police combined had ever been able to effect before his time. The history of his exploits is highly curious and interesting: in the two volumes already published, it is, however, only commenced ; the two subsequent ones will be still more curious, if that be possible.