senting themselves at the same time, 4 instances of three sisters, 3 instances of four; and the still more fearful spectacle of a mother and her daughter presenting themselves together has occurred no less than sixteen times!!

The aristocracy of the profession, the kept mistresses, have nearly all of them their favoured lovers, whom our author warns us by no means to confound with their ostensible protectors: many of these favourites occupy an elevated position in society'general officers-men of letters-financiers-noblemen.' The next rank-the higher class of street-walkers-who live free from personal restraint, exercise their trade during the day, and devote their nights to the society of their lovers, whom by preference they choose from among the students of law and medicine, and the juvenile attorneys, the intelligence and wit of these young men rendering them especially attractive.' These women never exact any payment from their favourites; on the contrary, they lavish their money upon them; and the number of young men in Paris who degrade themselves by being thus supported is considerable. This total absence of mercenary views,' says our author, 'is universal through all the gradations of prostitution, even to the very lowest. Towards their lovers, the disinterestedness of these abandoned women is unmixed and perfect.' The next class in the descending scale are perhaps the least corrupted and vicious of the whole: these nearly all of them exercise some industrious trade, in addition to their regular profession: many are economists, and invest their money in the savings-banks: not a few of them in the capital thus accumulated find ultimately the means of emancipating themselves, and set up in some decent business. The lovers chiefly sought after by this class are shopmen, journeymen hair-dressers, and journeymen tailors, the latter especially. In this rank there are many women whose degradation has sprung from poverty, and not from any propensity to vice. The lowest class is that which most demands the strict attention of the police; for with them are constantly associated men of the vilest and most dangerous character, their lovers or their souteneurs, who are for the most part liberated convicts. The attachment of these women for their favourites knows no bounds: the vilest treat

que sur la présentation de quelques habitués, et avec l'assentiment de tous les autres au nombre de quarante à cinquante'!!!! (Page 81.)

Parent-Duchâtelet was a skilful and valuable public servant. We believe, also, that he was a virtuous man; and the disgust with which we cast aside the book does not extend to its author. Nor would we be unjust to the work itself. As it exists, it would be unendurable in this country; but if divested of all its unnecessary grossness, all its trivial details, we should be glad to see, in an English dress, the solid information which it contains. We warn our readers against supposing that they will find what we speak of in a late trumpery publication of the Edinburgh press.

ment

ment at their hands, blows, even wounds, will not shake it. The duty of the souteneur is to warn his mistress of the approach of the police, when she is infringing the prescribed rules; and in the event of her being arrested, he is always prepared to do battle in her defence.

These are the four chief classes which constitute that division of the system in which the women continue to be free agents, and mistresses of their own actions; with the exception only of their constant subjection to the sanatory regulations, and, in the event of misconduct, to imprisonment. From the highest to the lowest, from the femme galante who lives surrounded by every luxury, to the half-clothed prowler through the streets, all are alike subjected to the dispensary, the hospital, and the prison. The visits to the dispensary are required to be made twice every month, and are recorded on a card, which they are bound to produce, when called upon to do so by the police. Nothing is a more marked characteristic of these women than the disdain which the higher ranks among them express for those of an inferior grade, the one grand criterion of their relative dignity being the price at which they accord their favours. Should any individual forget herself so far as to lower her terms, she is exposed to the anger and revilings of her fellows; it is an offence which in their opinion admits of no excuse. The contempt of the superior class naturally draws down upon it the vindictive hatred of the other; and when members of the two meet, as they perpetually do in the prison or the hospital, both reduced to the same hard fare and the same coarse dress, the inferior fails not to take a bitter revenge.

The mistresses of the houses of Tolerance have in their pay agents in the different hospitals, who form acquaintance with the handsomest of their fellow-patients; and, on their report, the Dame de Maison enters into a treaty with the girls thus selected, and makes them a present of clothes, and a weekly allowance of four or five francs during the remainder of their stay in the hospital; the agent herself receiving a much higher remuneration. These selections chiefly take place from among girls out of place, and workwomen without employment; who, on leaving the hospital, have no alternative before them but famine or vice. The houses of the lower class are recruited from the prisons by similar agency. Many of the Dames de Maison obtain their recruits by the aid of correspondents in the country, especially in the manufacturing departments: they often employ regular travellers for the same purpose; and not a few are in league with the persons who keep offices for the hiring of servants, who, without remorse, when a girl more than usually handsome applies for a place, send her to the address of one of the most showy of the licensed Maisons.

The

The train is so well laid, that it very generally succeeds-flattery, dress, luxuries of all sorts, conquer her repugnance, and she devotes herself to a life of shame, without even being aware that she has been the victim of a conspiracy. Especial care is taken to keep these unhappy creatures totally penniless, lest they should emancipate themselves from the thraldom they endure; and if they are suspected of economising, every art is used to lead them into extravagance. In the more splendid establishments, personal indulgences are granted to them in excess; yet, no sooner does disease attack them, than they are hurried off without sympathy or remorse from the very centre of luxury to the melancholy wards of a hospital. The vilest, the most revolting, and the most dangerous of all these licensed establishments are the dens in those parts of the city where the lower classes congregate; such as the Grand Barriers and the outward Boulevards. Day and night, one unceasing round of riot, debauchery, drunkenness, fighting, and theft takes place in these hot-beds of crime.

Clandestine prostitution has a range as wide as that which is regular and avowed. A large proportion of the total number of femmes galantes, or kept-mistresses-femmes à partie—the girls who habitually frequent the theatres-workwomen-maid-servants -and, last and most melancholy of all, children, form the catalogue of the 4000 females who constitute the mass of prostitution which does not submit itself to the law. The femmes à partie are a distinct race: they are women distinguished generally by their wit and their fascinating manners, who are, or have been, prostitutes. They keep a good table, and receive all visiters who are introduced to them by friends in whom they confide: they give dinners, balls, soirées; and collect around them as many beautiful faces as they can-divorced wives-actresses-opera-dancers, and femmes galantes of all kinds: they live by the spoils of the thoughtless young men of fortune. In disgraceful conduct the women who beset the theatres equal-they cannot exceed― their parallels in London. This stain upon our national manners has been far too patiently endured, and we hail with gratitude the recent effort of Mr. Macready to free our capital from so foul a reproach.

It has been painful to us to go into these details; but as of all the divisions of society this is the one in which the greatest difference exists between the two nations, we have deemed it right specially to direct the attention of our readers to it. That both in a moral and a religious point of view it is a subject of the deepest importance none can doubt; and it deserves, consequently, the calm attention of the political economist. English feelings and English prejudices may, perhaps, bias our judgment; our neigh

bours

bours consider us antiquated and unwise in our views on this branch of civil government; and we know that the French system of legalized prostitution is gradually spreading over other European nations. We do not wonder that it should do so; for, unquestionably, there are many advantages connected with it. These are upon the surface. The objections lie deeper. If legal surveillance could, without undue interference with the liberty of the subject, be made to extend over all those who are tainted with this vice, great good, great diminution of crime, disease, and misery would be the result; the benefit to the offenders would be important and permanent; they would become less immoral, and less dangerous subjects to the state. But experience has proved that this cannot be. The fact is notorious, that the law is not able to bring within its coercive powers one-half of the class. But this is not, we conceive, the chief objection to it. A portion of the class, having the sanction of the law, being under its care, legalized and protected, establishes at once a line of demarkation between it and the remaining part, which holds itself aloof from all restraint. The consequence is inevitable—the unrestricted portion become, from the mere circumstance of this distinction, this separation, more depraved, more audacious, and more dangerous than they would be, were there no such division. The slightest acquaintance with the nature of the human mind would convince us, à priori, that this must be so; but not only M. Frégier's volumes, but the more circumstantial work of Parent Duchâtelet, prove, beyond a shadow of doubt, that such is the case. From the amount, therefore, of good, which the exertions of the law effect in one half of the mass, is to be deducted the amount of evil which results to the other. But the question which relates to society at large is one of far greater importance; and here there is no balancing of good and evil. The legalizing, the trafficking with vice, the protection and countenance given to it, cannot exist without baneful effects extending themselves directly or indirectly over all divisions of society. The national scale of morality is brought down; the distinctions of right and wrong are defaced. A licensed brothel and a licensed gamblinghouse are less dangerous places to those who frequent them than similar abodes of vice unsubjected to control; but to society at large the injury resulting from the union of crime and law is incalculably greater. France has already perceived this as regards the one vice, and sanctioned gambling-houses have ceased to

exist.

It is proved, that among the prostitutes in Paris a considerable number economize their gains, are depositors in the savings-banks, and acquire the means of quitting their vicious course of life: it

is proved, also, that a large proportion of these unhappy women do ultimately obtain re-admission into their original classes of society. Could we restrict our views to these individuals, the knowledge that such is the case would be consolatory: but we must look also at those by whom they are received: we then perceive that it is the absence of high moral feeling in society at large which renders it possible for beings who have so degraded themselves ever to recover the station they have lost. The lax and depraved tone of society, which leads them to hope that such an event is possible, leads also to their economy and their savings. Instances of similar re-admission into the ranks of honesty are comparatively rare in England. It is not with sorrow that we assert this to be so. It is the purer morality of the social system with us that renders the exclusion final and irremediable e; and we hold that, where the loss to the unhappy class is as one, the gain to society is as a thousand.

The vagabonds are the next class described. They hold an intermediate place between the beggar and the robber.

Ragged and idle, vegetating in a state of torpid carelessness, and solely occupied by the present moment, these degraded beings abound in all the great centres of population. A numerous division of the tribe hang about the market-places, to pick up a few pence, by executing commissions, and eke out their daily gains by petty thefts and begging. The younger division of the class is recruited from among the boys expelled from the schools or the manufactories for inveterate idleness and misconduct, and who pass their entire days loitering in the streets, in defiance of the remonstrances and corrections of their parents. These young reprobates, whose ages vary from seven to sixteen, are soon enticed by other boys, more advanced in vice, to band themselves together into gangs, sometimes to the number of eighteen; one especial article of their compact being mutually to assist one another in escaping from the search of their parents, or of the masters to whom they have been apprenticed. The most timid and the least depraved frequent the markets, and beg or execute commissions; the bolder and more accomplished rob. With all of them, without exception, gambling is the ruling passion; next to this the theatre; and, in order to collect money to pay for their admission, they will frequently fast for a couple of days. Wherever there is noise, tumult, or sedition, there these gangs are sure to be seen. Those who rob, lord it over the rest, as it is from their gains that the more timid and the new recruits are supported. They are ambitious to form the acquaintance and receive the instructions of grown-up robbers; but indeed the fathers of many of them are robbers. An instance is known of one of these boys who, when not quite three years old, was able to pick a lock; and when soon afterwards he commenced business in the streets, the childish naïveté with which he recited his little felonies is said to have "filled his father's mind with delight and pride." These thievish imps swarm on the Boulevards, and

insinuate