wine, and he wrote between the lines, and on the margins, of books which he had concealed. Under these disadvantages, he composed several works of considerable length. Among these works was a “Treatise on the Duties of a faithful Christian.” They were taken away from him by his persecutors, and he deeply regretted the loss of them. After having been confined for eleven years, he was set at liberty; but was ordered to quit France for ever. It would have been strange had he wished to remain there. De Renneville sought an asylum in England, where George I. gave him a pension; and in 1715 he published his “French Inquisition, or the History of the Bastile,” which went through three or four editions, and was translated into various languages. It was probably at the instigation of those who were branded in this book, that he was attacked in the street by three cut-throats, whom, however, he bravely repulsed. De Renneville was living in 1724; but the time and place of his decease are not known. Among his works is a Collection of Voyages for the establishment, &c., of the Dutch East India Company. The next prisoner comes before us wrapped in such a mysterious cloud, that he scarcely seems to wear the aspect of a being of this world. His birth, his name, his country, his crime, are all unknown; all that we really know of him is, that he was long a captive, and that he died. It cannot be necessary to say, that the problematical individual alluded to is the personage who is distinguished by the appellation of “The Man with the Iron Mask.” There appears to have been in France, during the first forty years of the 18th century, a sort of indistinct tradition respecting a masked prisoner, who had been in various state prisons. It was not, however, till 1745 that any attempt was made to lift the veil which covered the subject. In that year came out “Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de Perse,” in which French characters were described under oriental names. In these memoirs, which have been ascribed to several writers, among whom is Voltaire, some particulars are given relative to the masked man, and he is asserted to have been the Count de Vermandois, natural son of Louis XIV., confined by his father for having struck the dauphin. The Memoirs gave rise to a controversy, and to an extravagant romance by the Chevalier de Mouhy; but nothing definite was brought forward till 1751, when Voltaire published, under a feigned name, the first edition of his “Age of Louis XIV.” Here he threw a ray of light on a part of the question, leaving, however, the rest in as much darkness as ever.