church-history, a branch of the ancient accephali-severitae. They agreed with the catholics in admitting the sixth council, but disowned any distinction of persons in the Godhead; and professed one single nature, incapable of any difference: yet they called God "the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

Damien, Robert François, an assassin by whom Louis XV. of France was wounded in the year 1757. He was born in the suburbs of Arras, in the year 1714; and seems rather to have been actuated by frenzy or insanity in the perpetration of the horrid deeds of which he was guilty, than by any of the motives to which they have been ascribed. This spirit appeared in the early period of his life; and such were the extravagance and violence of his conduct, that he was distinguished, while a boy, by the appellation of Robert the Devil.

When he grew up he entered into the army, served as a soldier at the siege of Philippsburgh, and was present at several engagements. He returned afterwards to France, and became a domestic servant in the college of Jesuits at Paris. He married in 1738, which rendered it necessary for him to resign this service. He was then employed in the same capacity by different masters, one of whom, it is said, he poisoned; and having robbed another, he was obliged to abscond to escape the punishment due to his crimes. During a period of five months after the discovery of the robbery, he lurked in the neighbourhood of St Omer, Dunkirk, and Brussels; and was observed to express himself in an absurd and incoherent manner concerning some disputes which at this time prevailed in France. The following soliloquy is said to have been uttered by him in a small town near Ypres: "If I return to Damien, France—Yes, I will return, I will die there, and the greatest man on earth shall die likewise, and you shall hear news of me." These expressions were uttered in the month of August 1756; and it is probable that they were regarded at the time only as the ravings of a madman. He spoke indeed in a similar strain in the December following, at the house of a relation, at Falesque near Arras, saying, "That the kingdom, his wife, and daughter, were all ruined!" It was about this time that he set out for Paris, and arrived there on the 31st of December. He was seen at Versailles, on the first day of January 1757. To blunt his feelings, and to prepare himself for the perpetration of the horrid act, it is said that he swallowed opium for several days. But the state of mind in which Damien is described to have been for some time before, seemed to render such auxiliaries unnecessary.

It was on the 5th of January, between five and six in the evening, that Louis XV. was wounded by the hand of this frantic assassin. He struck with a knife the right side of the king, while he was surrounded with his courtiers, and just as he was entering his carriage to go to Trianon. Damien was instantly seized, examined at Versailles, and afterwards sent to Paris and confined in the tower of Montgommery, in an apartment prepared for him, near to that which was formerly occupied by Ravailiac the murderer of Henry IV. The great court of parliament was charged by the king to institute his process; and although he was subjected to the most cruel tortures, which he bore with unexampled fortitude, no confession or acknowledgment could be extorted which afforded the smallest ground for suspicion that he had a single accomplice. When it was found that the torture failed of the purpose for which it was inflicted, he was condemned to die by the same punishment which Ravailiac suffered.

The 28th of March following was fixed as the day of his execution. On that day he was brought to the Place de Greve, where the apparatus and instruments of his destruction were prepared. All these he beheld with an undismayed countenance and a tearless eye, although he must have known well that new and more dreadful tortures yet awaited him. His punishment commenced with burning his right hand; his flesh was then torn with red-hot pincers; and the wounds were filled with melted wax, pitch, and lead. In attempting to quarter his body, the four horses which were employed pulled in vain for 50 minutes. All their efforts seemed to be ineffectual, till the executioners cut with knives the ligaments with which the limbs are attached to the body. Even after the legs were cut he was still alive, and it was only after the arms were treated in the same way that he ceased to breathe, and his body was dismembered. The period of his punishment, from the time he was put upon the scaffold till his death, was not less than an hour and a half; during the greater part of it he seemed to retain his recollection; for he raised his head many times, and cast his eyes on his mangled and burned limbs, and on the horses which were then exerting their whole force to tear his body asunder. And even during the severest of his tortures, the firmness of his mind was so little shaken, that he affected some degree of jocularity. Damiers. Thus perished this unfortunate assassin, the history of whose life, considered in itself, is scarcely worthy of a place even for the shortest sketch; and indeed we should probably not have introduced it here, were it not for the purpose of rectifying the mistaken views of some of his biographers. While we are told that he was an insane assassin, he is charged with the same degree of guilt, as if he had been all his life in full possession of every rational faculty. But the events of his life leave no doubt of his insanity; and the last horrid deed which he perpetrated strongly confirms it. He was not actuated by either public or private revenge; he had no accomplices; and it does not appear that he had any purpose whatever to serve by taking away the life of the monarch, even if he had succeeded and escaped. In the midst of his most cruel tortures, he obstinately persisted that it was not his intention to kill the king. According to his own fanatical language, he wished that God would touch his heart to induce him to give peace to his kingdom. Our readers will probably anticipate us in remarking the needless excess of lingering punishment which was inflicted on the insane Damiers; and some of them will perhaps be surprised to be told that the execution was attended by some of the ladies of the court. Many of them too will naturally compare this event with what has happened more lately in our own country; and recollect, that a Nicholson and a Hadfield, influenced by a similar frenzy which urged them to a similar attempt, have been only doomed to perpetual confinement, not as a punishment, but merely to preclude the possibility of perpetrating such deeds; because in such a state of mind they are not recognized by our milder and more equitable laws as rational beings; and therefore they are improper objects of punishment.