bandit named Pelissier. This was in the Place de Greve, where some twenty years previously Damiens had been tormented for days in precisely the same way as Ravaillac had been for the assas sination of Henri IV. During four months after the execution the ma chine which was eventually to achieve such sin ister celebrity was disused. In August it was transferred to the Place du Carrousel, and a few weeks later it was alternately stationed in the Place de Greve, the centre of what is now called the Place de la Concorde, and in the Place du Trone. It was in the Place de la Concorde that Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Mademoiselle Elisabeth, and some eight thousand other victims fell beneath the identical blade which, by a curious irony of fate, is now to be seen in the Chamber of Horrors at Mademoiselle Tussaud's. As it is impossible now to ascertain the exact number of the victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, so it is impos sible to give a correct estimate of the number of persons who were put to death by the guillotine in France between Aug. 10, 1792, and the 9th "Thermidor," 1794; but it was certainly not un der forty thousand. Lamartine and Thiers gave the number as under twenty thousand; but they do not seem to have been acquainted with the evidence which has been discovered during the last few years of the facts of the " Comity du Salut Public" in the small towns and villages where roughly constructed guillotines were erected and performed their awful work with appalling regularity. Under the Empire and Restoration the guillo tine was permanently stationed in the Place de Greve, and executed annually between thirty and forty persons. During the reign of Louis Philippe the guillotine was transferred to the Barriere St. Jacques, and under the Second Empire to the Place de la Roquette, where it remains. During the Commune the old guillotine was burned by the people, and the present instrument is quite new. Sanson, who was the public executioner through out the Reign of Terror, sold the original guillo tine to Curtius for £1,000; and he in turn disposed of it for a larger sum to his niece, Mademoiselle Tussaud. Dr. Guillotin, who died in 1814, ener getically but vainly protested against the use of his name in connection with this disagreeable subject, — another evidence, if one were wanted, of the great difficulty there is of correcting a popular
error. Needless to say that the legend that Dr. Guillotin was among the victims of his friend's in genious and merciful instrument of destruction is wholly apocryphal. He died at a good old age, and in his bed, surrounded by his children, who, however, obtained permission to change their name. — The Saturday Review.
decent SDcatf)*?. Prof. Theodore W. Dwight died on June 29 at his home at Clinton, N. Y. He was born in Catskill, on the Hudson, N. Y., on July 18, 1822. His grandfather was Timothy Dwight, the seventh President of Yale College. Dr. Dwight himself was cousin to the Timothy Dwight who is now President of Yale. The Dwight family was a dis tinguished one in colonial times. In Dr. Dwight's early youth his father moved to Clinton, N. Y. Young Dwight entered the Sophomore Class at Hamilton College, and graduated with the highest honors at the age of eighteen. He studied law in the Yale College Law School in 1841 and 1842. From 1842 to 1846 he was a tutor in Hamilton College, and from 1846 to 1858 held there the chair of law, history, civil polity, and political economy. In 1858 he was elected Professor of Municipal Law in Columbia College. On the organization of the Columbia College Law School he became its warden. In June, 189 1, he resigned his active connection with the Columbia College Law School, but was made Professor Emeritus of Municipal Law. Professor Dwight was one of the hardest working and most valued members of the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1867. He served on the Judiciary Committee. He was VicePresident of the State Board of Public Charities in 1873, President of the State Prison Association in 1874, and an active member of the Committee of Seventy. He was appointed by Governor Dix a member of the Commission of Appeals in 1873. He was also an associate editor of the " American Law Register." He published many pamphlets and treatises on law, and edited Henry Sumner Maine's " Ancient Law." (An excellent portrait of Professor Dwight was published in the "Green Bag," April, 1889.)
