complete _oubliettes;_ the devoted were certain to fall into the land
where all things are forgotten.--(_Pennant's London._)

When the Bastille of France was demolished, three iron cages were
discovered, they were made of strong bars of iron, about eight feet high
and six feet wide, and such have been used in other prisons in that
country. The Bishop of Verdun, according to Mezeray, was the inventer,
and was himself the first man confined in them, and remained a prisoner
thus for eleven years, so that he could speak practically as to his own
invention.

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FEMALE LEANDER.

The Duchess of Chevereux, who was for the first time at the court of
England, in 1638, swam across the Thames, in a frolic, near Windsor. On
this occasion some verses were composed by a Sir J. M. containing these
lines:--

But her chaste breast, cold as the cloyster'd nun,
Whose frost to chrystal might congeal the sun,
So glar'd the stream, that pilots, there afloat,
Thought they might safely land without a boat;
July had seen the Thames in ice involv'd,
Had it not been by her own beams dissolv'd.


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