house. He attended accordingly; but the father having learnt his character, insisted that he should decline his visits. He soon, however, got over this disappointment, by wedding a widow of considerable wealth; but his taste for extravagance rendered these riches unequal to his support. Unfortunately, at the juncture, he again fell in with Zannier, who came to him, begging his forgiveness for obliging him to pay the debt. De la Fontaine too easily complied, and once more considered him as a friend this led to his ruin, for the Venetian sought him to victimise him again. The scheme he put in force was this:

Zannier induced De la Fontaine to go to a tavern, where they met with a woman whom the latter had formerly known, and a man who was dressed in black. While De la Fontaine was conversing with the woman, the stranger (who afterwards appeared to be a Fleet parson) read the marriage ceremony from a book which he held in his hand; and the next week De la Fontaine was apprehended on a charge of bigamy, and committed for trial at the Old Bailey. Zannier visited him in Newgate, and proposed for a sum of money to procure his acquittal. De la Fontaine was so enraged at this perfidy, that he on the instant beat Zannier with such severity, that the turnkey was obliged to interpose to prevent murder. In revenge of this, Zannier laid an information on oath against De la Fontaine for forgery, in imitating the handwriting of a gentleman named Parry: in consequence of which De la Fontaine was brought to trial, and capitally convicted, though a gentleman swore that the writing resembled that of Zannier, and there was too much reason to believe the latter committed the forgery.

On the evidence adduced, the jury found De la Fontaine

guilty; the court sentenced him to death, and the day was appointed for his execution. His innocence was, however, so loudly urged by himself and his friends, that he was respited; this was from time to time continued, during five years, when he was pardoned on condition of transportation. His not being able to clearly show his total absence from guilt, prevented government from doing more for him. In September, 1752, with many other convicts, he was shipped to the English colony of Virginia, in America.

CRIMINALS WHO HAVE RETURNED TO LIFE

AFTER EXECUTION.

THE following singular circumstance is recorded by Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of Oxfordshire :

In the year 1650, Anne Green, a servant of Sir Thomas Read, was tried for the murder of her new-born child, and found guilty. She was executed in the castle-yard at Oxford, where she hung about half-an-hour. Being cut down, she was put into a coffin, and brought away to a house to be dissected; where, when they opened the coffin, notwithstanding the rope still remained unloosed, and straight about her neck, they perceived her breast to rise; whereupon one Mason, a tailor, intending only an act of charity, set his foot upon her; and, as some say, one Orum, a soldier, struck her again with the buttend of his musket. Notwithstanding all which, when the learned and eminent Sir William Petty, ancestor of the present Marquis of Lansdowne, then anatomy professor of the University, Dr. Wallis, and Dr. Clarke, then president of Magdalen College, and vice-chancelor of the University, came to prepare the body for dissection, they perceived some small rattling in her throat; hereupon desisting from their former purpose, they presently used means for her recovery by opening a vein, laying her in a warm bed, and also using divers remedies respecting her senselessness, insomuch, that within fourteen hours she began to speak, and the next day talked and prayed very heartily. During the time of this her reco

vering, the officers concerned in her execution would needs have had her away again to have completed it on her; but by the mediation of the worthy doctors, and some other friends with the then governor of the city, Colonel Kelsy, there was a guard put upon her to hinder all further disturbance until they had sued out her pardon from the government. Much doubt indeed arose as to her actual guilt. Crowds of people in the meantime came to see her, and many asserted that it must be the providence of God, who would thus assert her innocence.

After some time, Dr. Petty hearing she had discoursed with those about her, and suspecting that the women might suggest unto her to relate something of strange visions and apparitions she had seen during the time she seemed to be dead, (which they already had begun to do, telling that she said she had been in a fine green meadow, having a river running round it, and all things there glittered like silver and gold,) he caused all to depart the room but the gentlemen of the faculty who were to have been at the dissection, and asked her concerning her sense and apprehensions during the time she was hanged. To which she answered, that she neither remembered how the fetters were knocked off; how she went out of the prison; when she was turned off the ladder; whether any psalm was sung or not; nor was she sensible of any pains that she could remember. She came to herself as if she had awakened out of sleep, not recovering the use of her speech by slow degrees, but in a manner altogether, beginning to speak just where she left off on the gallows.

Being thus at length perfectly recovered, after thanks given to God, and the persons instrumental in bringing her to life, and procuring her an immunity from further punishment, she

retired into the country to her friends at Steeple Barton, where she was afterwards married, and lived in good repute amongst her neighbors, having three children, and not dying till 1659.

The following account of the case of a girl who was wrongly executed in 1766, is given by a celebrated French author, as an instance of the injustice which was often committed by the equivocal mode of trial then used in France.

About seventeen years since, a young peasant girl was placed at Paris, in the service of a man, who, smitten with her beauty, tried to enveigle ber; but she was virtuous, and resisted. The prudence of this girl irritated the master, and he determined on revenge. He secretly conveyed into her box many things belonging to him, marked with his name. He then exclaimed that he was robbed, called in a commissaire, (a ministerial officer of justice,) and made his deposition. The girl's box was searched, and the things were discovered. The unhappy servant was imprisoned. She defended herself only by her tears; she had no evidence to prove that she did not put the property in her box; and her only answer to the interrogatories was, that she was innocent. The judges had no suspicion of the depravity of the accuser, whose station was respectable, and they administered the law in all its rigor. The innocent girl was condemned to be hanged. The dreadful office was ineffectually performed, as it was the first attempt of the son of the chief executioner. A surgeon had purchased the body for dissection, and it was conveyed to his house. On that evening, being about to open the head, he perceived a gentle warmth about the body. The dissecting knife fell from his hand, and he placed in a bed her whom he was about to dissect. His efforts to restore her to life