Houdin has been considered of such importance and interest in France, that in Didot’s _Nouvelle Biographie Générale_, now in course of publication at Paris, a whole page is given to him. From this memoir, and from his own account in the pages which follow, we learn that he was born at Blois, on the 6th December, 1805,--that his father, a watchmaker in that city, gave him a good education at the College of Orleans,--that his inclination for _escamotage_ (or juggling) was so decided as to make him averse to pursue his father’s trade,--that he early exhibited great taste for mechanical inventions, which he so successfully cultivated that, at the Paris Exhibition of 1844, he was awarded a medal for the ingenious construction of several automata,--that, having studied the displays of the great masters on the art of juggling, he opened a theatre of his own, in the Palais Royal in Paris, to which his celebrated _soirées fantastiques_ attracted crowds,--that, in 1848, when the Revolution had ruined all theatrical speculations in Paris, he visited London, where his performances at St. James’s Theatre were universally attractive and lucrative,--that he made a tour through Great Britain with equal success, returning to Paris when France had settled down quietly under the rule of a President,--that he subsequently visited many other parts of Europe, every where received with distinction and applause,--that at the Great Parisian Exhibition of 1855, he was awarded the gold medal for his scientific application of electricity to clocks,--that, shortly after, he closed ten years of active public life by relinquishing his theatre to Mr. Hamilton, his brother-in-law, retiring with a well-earned competency to Blois,--and that, in 1857, at the special request of the French Government, which desired to lessen the influence of the Marabouts, whose conjuring tricks, accepted as actual magic by the Arabs, gave them too much influence, he went to Algeria, as a sort of Ambassador, to play off his tricks against theirs, and, by greater marvels than they could shew, destroy the _prestige_ which they had acquired. He so completely succeeded that the Arabs lost all faith in the miracles of the Marabouts, and thus was destroyed an influence very dangerous to the French Government. In his retirement, to which he has returned, Houdin wrote his _Confidences_, and is now devoting himself to scientific researches connected with electricity. Before the appearance of his own work, M. Hatin had published, in 1857, _Robert-Houdin, sa vie, ses œuvres, son théâtre_. The French and English critics have generally and warmly eulogized M. Houdin’s _Confidences_, and I am persuaded that, on this side of the Atlantic, it will be considered an instructive as well as an amusing volume.