PROVIDENTIAL ESCAPES OF THOMAS PAINE, DURING TUR FRENCH REVOLUTION,

THE following interesting account, in Mr. Paine's own words, is extracted from a letter to Lady Smith: "In Paris, in 1798, I had lodgings in the Rue Fauxbourg St. Denis, No. 63. They were the most agreeable for situation of any I ever had in Paris, except that they were too remote from the convention, of which I was then a member. But this was recompensed by their being also re mote from the alarms and contusion into which the inte rior of Paris was then often thrown. The news of those things used to arrive to us, as if we were in a state of tranquillity in the country. The house, which was inclosed by a wall and gate-way from the street, was a good deal like an old mansion fàrm-house, and the courtyard was like a farm-yard, stocked with fowls, ducks, tur keys and geese; which, for amusement, we used to feed out of the parlor window on the ground floor. There were some hutches for rabbits, and a sty with two pigs, Beyond, was a garden of more than an acre of ground, well laid out, and stocked with excellent fruit-trees, orange, apricot, and green-gage plum, were the best I ever tasted; and it is the only place where I saw the wild cucumber. The place had formerly been occupied by some curious person.

The

My apartments consisted of three rooms; the first for wood, water, &c., with an old-fashioned closet-chest high enough to hang up clothes in; the next was the bed-room; and beyond it the sitting-room, which looked into the gar den through a glass-door; and, on the outside, there was a small landing place railed in, and a flight of narrow stairs, almost hidden by the vines that grew over it, by which I could descend into the garden, without going down stairs through the house.

One day I went into my chamber to write and sign a certificate for two friends who were under arrest, which I intended to take to the guard house, to obtain their release. Just as I had finished it, a man came into my room, dressed in the Parisian uniform of a captain, and

spoke to me in good English, and with a good address. He told me that two young men, Englishmen, were arrested, and detained in the guard house, and that the section (meaning those who represented and acted for the section) had sent him to ask me if I knew them, in which case they would be liberated. This matter being soon settled between us, he talked to me about the Revolution, and something about the "Rights of Man," which he had read in English; and, at parting, offered me, in a polite and civil manner, his services. And who do you think the man was that offered me his services? It was no other than the public executioner, SAMSON, who guillotined the king and all who lived in the same section, and in the same street with me.

As to myself, I used to find some relief by walking alone in the garden after dark, and cursing, with hearty good will, the authors of that terrible system that had had turned the character of the revolution I had been proud to defend.

I went but little to the convention, and then only to make my appearance; but I found it impossible to join in their tremendous decrees, and useless and dangerous to oppose them. My having voted and spoken extensively, more so than any other member, against the execution of the king, had already fixed a mark upon me: neither dared any of my associates in the convention to translate, and speak in French for me, any thing I might have dared to have written.

Pen and ink were then of no use to me: no good could be done by writing, and no printer dared to print: and whatever I might have written for my private amusement, as anecdotes of the times, would have been continually exposed to be examined, and tortured into any meaning that the rage of party might fix upon it; and, as to softer subjects, my heart was in distress at the fate of my friends, and my harp was hung upon the weeping willows.

As it was summer, we spent most of our time in the garden, and passed it away in those childish amusements that serve to keep reflection from the mind, such as marble, scotch-hops, battledores, &c., at which we were all pretty expert.

In this retired manner we remained about six or seven

weeks; and our landlord went every evening into the city, to bring us the news of the day, and the evening journal.

Two days after, I heard a rapping at the gate; and looking out of the window of the bedroom, I saw the landlord going with a candle to the gate, which he opened, and a guard with muskets and fixed bayonets entered, I went to bed again, and made up my mind for prison; for I was then the only lodger. It was a guard to take up but, I thank God, they were out of their reach. The guard came about a month after, in the night, and took away the landlord, Georgeit; and the scene in the house finished with the arrestation of myself.

I was one of the nine members that composed the first Committee of Constitution. Six of them have been destroyed; Sieyes and myself have survived-he, by bending with the times, and I by not bending. The other survivor joined Robespierre, and signed with him the warrant for my arrestation. After the fall of Robespierre, he was seized and imprisoned in his turn, and sentenced to transportation. He has since apologized to me for having signed the warrant, by saying he felt himself in danger, and was obliged to do it. Herault Sechelles, an acquaintance of Mr. Jefferson's, and a good patriot, was my suppleant as a member of the Committee of Constitution; that is, he was to supply my place, if I had not accepted or resigned, being next in number of votes to me. He was imprisoned in the Luxembourg with me, was taken to the tribunal, and to the guillotine; and I, his principal, was left.

There were but two foreigners in the convention, Anarcharis Cloots and myself. We were both put out of the convention by the same vote, arrested by the same order, and carried to prison together the same night. He was taken to the guillotine, and I was again left. Joel Barlow was with us when we went to prison.

Joseph Lebon, one of the vilest characters that ever existed, and who made the streets of Arras run with blood, was my suppleant member of the convention for the department of the Pays de Calais. When I was put out of the convention, he came and took my place. When I was liberated from prison, and voted again into the convention,

he was sent to the same prison, and took my place there; and he went to the guillotine instead of me. He supplied my place all the way through.

One hundred and sixty-eight persons were taken out of the Luxembourg in one night, and a hundred and sixty of them guillotined the next day, of which I know I was to have been one; and the manner in which I escaped that fate is curious, and has all the appearance of accident. The room in which I was lodged was on the ground floor, and one of a long range of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall; so that when it was open, the inside of the door appeared outward, and the contrary when it was shut. I had three comrades, fellow-prisoners with me: Joseph Vanhuile, of Bruges, since president of the municipality of that town, Michael Robins, and Bastini, of Louvain. When persons by scores and by hundreds were to be taken out of prison for the guillotine, it was always done in the night, and those who performed that office had a private mark or signal, by which they knew what rooms to go to, and what number to take.

We, as I said, were four, and the door of our room was marked, unobserved by us, with that number in chalk; but it happened, if happening is a proper word, the mark was put on the door when it was open and flat against the wall, and thereby came on the inside when we shut it at night,and the destroying angel passed it by. A few days after this, Robespierre fell; and the American ambassador arrived and reclaimed me, and invited me to his house.

During the whole of my imprisonment, prior to the fall of Robespierre, there was no time when I could think my life worth twenty-four hours; and my mind was made up to meet its fate."

After Mr. Paine's liberation, he found a friendly asylum at the American minister's house, Mr. Monroe, late President of the United States; and for some years before Mr. Paine left Paris, he lodge at Mr. Bonville's, associating occasionally with the great men of the day, viz. Condorcet, Volney, Mercier, Joel Barlow, &c. &c., and sometimes dining with Bonaparte and his generals.

MURDER IN THE ISLAND OF GUERNSEY.

ABOUT the year 1726, John Andrew Gordier, a gentleman of French extraction, and of considerable fortune, in the island of Jersey, was upon the point of marrying the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Guernsey; but, on a sudden, he was lost to his friends and relations, as well as to the lady who was to have been his bride; and notwithstanding the most diligent inquiry in both islands, with every possible search that could be made, not the least intelligence could be obtained, either of his death or his

retreat.

It happened, however, that after a time, when all discourse concerning him had subsided, his body was acci dentally found in Guernsey, by some boys, in traversing the beach, with two wounds on the back, and one on the head, thrust into the cavity of a rock, whose mouth was so small, that it must have been with difficulty that the body could be made to enter it.

This discovery, with those evident proofs of murder, alarmed the two families; the former inquiries were in vain renewed; not the least light, either to countenance suspicion, or to ground conjecture, could be gathered, to trace out the murderer; and all that could be done, was to pay the last duty to the remains of the unfortunate youth, by solemnizing his funeral with all the marks of unaffected sorrow.

The mother of the young gentleman remained inconsolable; and the lady to whom he was soon to have been wedded, pined in secret for the loss of the only man in the world whom she could love. She was, indeed, courted by a young merchant; but though she was, in a manner, constrained by her parents to admit his addresses, she was inwardly resolved never to give him her hand.

The mother of Gordier, who never ceased to ruminate on the catastrophe which had befallen her son, was not a little solicitous for the welfare of the young lady, whom she looked upon as her daughter-in-law, and whom she regarded with the greater tenderness, as she heard how severely she was affected by the sudden disappearance of her intended husband.