of King _Clovis_, to be executed at Paris, and placed his children
under the scaffold, that the blood of their father might run upon their
heads; in which bloody condition they were returned to the Bastile, and
there shut up in iron cages: and a King of SIAM, having lost his
daughter, and fancying she was poisoned, put most of his court, young
and old, to death, by the most exquisite torture; by this horrid act of
cruelty, near two thousand of the principal courtiers suffered the most
dreadful deaths; the great Mandarins, their wives, and children, being
all scorched with fire, and mangled with knives, before they were
admitted to his last favour,--that of being thrown to the elephants.

But to have done with sad subjects.--It was not till the year 1758 that
it was certainly known at what time, or for what purpose, the _Maison
Carree_ was erected; but fortunately, the same town which produced the
building so many ages ago, produced in the latter end of the last, a
Gentleman, of whom it may be justly said, he left no stone unturned to
come at the truth. This is _Mons. Seguier_, whose long life has been
employed in collecting a cabinet of Roman antiquities, and natural
curiosities, and whose penetrating genius alone could have discovered,
by the means he did, an inscription, of which not a single letter has
been seen for many ages; but this _habile observateur_, perceiving a
great number of irregular holes upon the frontal and frize of this
edifice, concluded that they were the cramp-holes which had formerly
held an inscription, and which, according to the practice of the
Romans, were often composed of single letters of bronze. _Mons. Seguier_
therefore erected scaffolding, and took off on paper the distances and
situation of the several holes, and after nicely examining the
disposition of them, and being assisted by a few faint traces of some of
the letters, which had been impressed on the stones, brought forth, to
the full satisfaction of every body, the original inscription, which