JOHN FOY, a physician and great medalist, to whom, according to Voltaire, France was indebted for the science of medals, and Louis XIV. for one half of his cabinet, was born at Beauvais in 1632. Through the means of the minister Colbert he travelled into Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Persia, to collect medals for the royal cabinet ; and returned with so many as made the king's cabinet superior to any in Europe. In one of his voyages the ship was taken by an Algerine corsair. After a captivity of near five months he was permitted to return to France, and received at the same time 20 gold medals which had been taken from him. He embarked in a vessel bound for Marseilles, and was carried on with a favourable wind for two days, when another corsair appeared, which, in spite of all the fail they could make, bore down upon them within the reach of cannon shot. Mr Vaillant, dreading the miseries of a fresh slavery, resolved, however, to secure the medals which he had received at Algiers, and therefore swallowed them. But a sudden turn of the wind freed them from this adversary, and cast them upon the coast of Catalonia, where, after expecting to run aground every moment, they at length fell among the sands at the mouth of the Rhone. Mr Vaillant got to shore in a skiff, but felt himself extremely incommodeed with the medals he had swallowed, which might weigh altogether five or six ounces, and therefore did not pass like Scarborough waters. He had recourse to a couple of physicians ; who were a little puzzled with the singularity of his case ; however, nature relieved him from time to time, and he found himself in possession of the greatest part of his treasure when he got to Lyons. Among his collection was an Otho, valuable for its rarity.—He was much censured on his return ; and when Louis XIV. gave a new form to the academy of inscriptions in 1701, Mr Vaillant was first made associate, and then pensionary. He wrote several works relating to ancient coins, and died in 1706.