At least twelve or thirteen candidates have been brought forward for the melancholy honour of being the personage in question. Two of them are English—the Duke of Monmouth and Henry Cromwell. Of the latter it is only necessary to state that he lived a quiet country life after the restoration, and died in Huntingdonshire in 1679. The Duke of Monmouth is supposed, by M. de St. Foix, to have found some one obliging enough to mount the scaffold in his stead, and to have been sent to France, to be kept in safe custody. This ineffably absurd theory is demolished by the fact, that, when Monmouth was executed, the man with the mask had been for twenty years in prison. Equally baseless is the system of the Chevalier de Taulès, who made a claim for Ardewicks, the patriarch of the Armenians at Constantinople, who was kidnapped, taken to France, and lodged in the Bastile by the Jesuits, to whom he had given offence. But Ardewicks was not carried off till 1699 or 1700, and he is known to have embraced catholicism, recovered his liberty, and died at Paris. A recent French writer, of very considerable talent and research, has revived the idea that Fouquet was the prisoner, and has supported his argument with great skill; but it is impossible to reconcile his supposition with the story told by Voltaire. With respect to Fouquet the precautions and deference, which Voltaire mentions, would not have been deemed necessary. We have seen that the author of the “Secret Memoirs on Persia” asserts the Count of Vermandois to have been the unknown captive. Voltaire contemptuously denies the truth of this assertion; which is, indeed, sufficiently refuted by the well-ascertained fact, that the count died, of small-pox, at the army in Flanders, in 1683, and was buried at Arras; his death was notorious to numbers of persons. The Duke of Beaufort has been invested with the mask on no better authority. There can be no doubt that he was slain, in a sally, at the siege of Candia, in 1669. But, say those who adopt him as their hero, his body was never found. It certainly was not recognised; and for this plain reason, that the Turks stripped it, and cut off the head. The next asserted owner of the mask is backed by no less than four champions, Dutens, Roux-Fazillac, Delort, and the late Lord Dover, and his cause has been ably supported by them all. The claimant for whom they contend is Matthioli, secretary of the Duke of Mantua, who, for having outwitted Louis in a negotiation respecting the cession of Casal, was seized by order of the monarch, and imprisoned at Pignerol and other places. There are, however, circumstances which seem decisive against his being the man with the iron mask. It will perhaps suffice to mention that, instead of meeting with respect and indulgence, he was treated with the utmost harshness, and even cruelty. It has been argued, as a presumption on his side, that his name bears a resemblance to that of Marchiali, under which the unknown captive was buried.