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readers will be the less surprised at the style and spirit of the observations made by M. Sanson, ante, p. 28, when they learn the following particulars of him and his family. It appears that, when the Revolution had swept away every other trace of feudality, M. Sanson was a gentleman of respectable genealogy, exercising a hereditary office derived from the ancestors of the monarch whose head fell by his (we believe) reluctant hand.

1. Charles Sanson, a native of Abbeville, and a relation of the great geographer of that name, being in 1675 lieutenant in a regiment garrisoned at Dieppe, married the daughter of the Executioner of Normandy. In 1684, Carlier, the Executioner of Paris, being dismissed, Charles Sanson was appointed in his room. He died in 1695, and was succeeded by his son—

2. Charles Sanson, who died 12th September, 1726, having only the month previous resigned in favour of his son—

3. Charles John Baptiste Sanson, who was appointed by letters patent, dated the 12th September, "Exécuteur des arrêts et sentences criminelles de la ville, prévôte et vicomté de Paris," but, being very young, he was authorised to exercise his office by deputy; the Parliament of Paris appointed one Prudhomme the Deputy, and fixed the majority of the principal at the early age of sixteen, when he came into office and filled it to his death, on the 4th August, 1778. His son,