I suspect it was first generally adopted, or at least was made popular, by the Commonwealth men. E. S. T. T.

MEMOIRES D'une conteMPORAINE.

(Vol. vi., p. 75.)

The question of UNEDA (Philadelphia) is worth answering, for the sake of historical truth, though the person and the book he inquires after are in themselves utterly contemptible. The woman was an aventurière of the most profligate class: it is not very clear what her real name was; that which she first assumed, Van-Aylde-Yonghe, was the maiden name of her mother, a Dutch woman. She seems afterwards to have assumed, in the course of her trade as a professed courtesan, several temporary names; amongst others, those of Ney and Moreau, whom she lived with; but at last she settled down under that of Ida de St. Elme. Having been born in 1778, her personal stock in trade must have deteriorated considerably by the time of the Restoration; and at the age of fortysix (1824 ?) she attempted to become an authoress, but without success. She could find no bookseller to print a novel which, with the usual tact and good sense of such persons, she chose to call Corinne. She now fell into such misery as to have, she says, attempted suicide. This seems, like all her anecdotes, very apocryphal; but she was received into some kind of charitable asylum. About this time the appetite for scandalous memoirs was in full force in Paris, and she thought of directing her authorship into that line. With the assistance of a hack littérateur of the name of Malitourne, and under the patronage of Lavocat the bookseller, she produced the voluminous and indecent fatras, in eight volumes octavo, which UNEDA mentions. Some scandalous and licentious anecdotes of her own life may perhaps be true, and nothing can equal her effrontery in telling them but the work altogether is a profligate catchpenny, of no authority or value whatsoever, and is, I believe, now selling almost as waste paper. C.

FISHING BY ELECTRICITY.

(Vol. vi., p. 53.) The following paragraph, from The West of England Conservative for July 28, 1852, will perhaps interest your correspondent LLEWILLAH. "We alluded several weeks since, to certain experi

ments by Mr. E. A. Heineken, of Bremen, to test the applicability of electricity as a means of facilitating the capture of whales. Mr. Heineken, who is now in the United States, has recently received intelligence from Bremen which is of much interest, relating to the success of this invention, as practically tested on board the Bremen whale-ship 'Averick Heineken,' Captain

Georken.

The Averick Heineken' left the river Weser last July, for the Pacific Ocean, having on board three rotation machines of various sizes, in order to ascertain the degree of power necessary to secure sperm or right whales; one machine containing one magnet, another four, and another fourteen. Captain Georken, in a letter dated New Zealand, Dec. 13, 1851, writes as follows: The first experiment we made with the new invention was upon a shark, applying the electricity from the machine with one magnet. The fish, after being struck, instantly turned over on its side, and after we had poured in upon him a stream of electricity for a few moments by turning the handle of the machine, the shark became stiff as a piece of wood. We next fell in with a black fish, As soon as the whale-iron was thrown into him, and the machine handle turned, the fish began to sink. The operator then ceased turning the machine, and the fish immediately rose; when the machine was again set in motion, upon which the fish lay stiff on the surface of the water, and was taken alongside of the ship. At this time we made use of the four-magnet machine. We saw sperm and other whales, and lowered our boats, but were unsuccessful in getting fast to them, as they disappeared on our approaching them; while at all other times the weather was too boisterous to permit us to lower our boats. Thus we had but one chance to try the experiment upon a whale, which was made with the four-magnet machine. The whale, upon being struck, made one dash onward, then turned on his side, and was rendered perfectly powerless. Although I have, as yet, not been fortunate enough to test the invention in more instances, I have the fullest confidence in the same, and doubt not to be able to report the most astonishing results on my return from the Arctic seas, where I am now bound.'”

MATURIN LAURENT.

(Vol. vi., pp. 11. 111.)

W. FRASER.

Your correspondent A. N. will find in the Histoire de Jacobinism, by the Abbé Barruel, that Maturin Laurent was a monk that Marc Michel, the celebrated bookseller in Amsterdam, kept in his pay, and who furnished him with many works of a similar character to Le Compère Mathieu. As your correspondent truly says, "it is a somewhat learned and not altogether undull" book; but "it is not an imitation of the manner of Rabelais." It is a philosophical romance, in which many of the most curious speculations of the human mind are argued with great ability. Two lads leave the Jesuits' College at La Flêche, are joined by a Spaniard and Englishman, a renegade priest, and one or two others, who travel together over a great part of Europe, and indulge with great freedom on a great variety of topics. The story serves for a peg to hang their philosophy on. Voltaire repudiates being the author. The style is indeed unlike that of Voltaire, but equally brilliant; and the language is very pure. The copy of Le Compère

Mathieu I have is a Paris edition, MDCCXCVI., "Imprimerie de Patris." The "Avis de l'Editeur' may be acceptable to some of the readers of "N. & Q.," to whom the book may not be known: "Il importe fort peu au public d'apprendre par quel hasard cet ouvrage m'est tombé dans les mains. I doit savoir que j'ai été plus de quatre ans dans l'irrésolution de le mettre au jour. Je puis compter sur une douzaine d'amis vertueux et éclairés. Quatre d'entre eux voulaient que je le fisse imprimer ; quatre me poussaient à le brûler; et le reste me disait d'en faire ce que je jugerais à-propos. Un coup détermina l'affaire, et ce coup fut pour l'impression.

JAMES CORNISH.

Par. ii. 49-51.:

"Ma ditemi che sono i segni bui

Di questo corpo, che laggiuso in terra

Fan di Cain favoleggiare, altrui ?"

On the former passage there is the following gloss in the commentary of Jacopo dalla Lana, published at Venice in 1476, under the pseudonyme of Benvenuto da Imola:

"Dice che Chayno elle spine cio e la luna; perche fabulose si dice che Chayno figliuo Dadam e nella luna con uno fascio di spine in spalla Simile a quello chel portava nel mondo a fare sul monte sacrificio a dio."

Plutarch has a treatise “ περὶ τοῦ εμφαινομένου προσώπου τῷ κύκλῳ τῆς Σελήνης.” Plutarchi Opera : Lut. Paris, 1624, fol. tom. ii. 910. p.

Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromat. lib. i.) quotes Serapion for the tradition of the face which appears in the moon being the soul of a sibyl. See Sibyllina Oracula (Parisiis, 1607, 8vo.), pp. 97, 98.

F. C. B.

effigy of a knight bearing a collar of SS., which must have been beautifully executed, but which, from repeated coats of whitewash and the damp, is at present so clogged up as to be scarcely discernible.

"He is in armour, with a collar of SS., a large dagger on his right side; at his feet a dog; his head reclines on a helmet, and his hands, which are broken off, were uplifted in prayer. On the front [of the tomb] are four blank shields."- Nichols's History of Leicestershire, vol. iii. part ii. p. 995., in which the above-mentioned tomb is engraved.

Leicester.

THOMAS L. WALKER.

Reverence to the Altar (Vol. vi., pp. 33. 109.).— I do not quite agree with MR. BEDE that the custom in Huntingdonshire, Pembrokeshire, and no doubt many other places, of bowing to the clergyman on entering church is a mere abuse of the ancient reverence to the altar; for the two distinct usages may have coexisted. If it be nothing but a "transfer of the mark of respect from the altar to the clergyman," at all events it received early sanction in some places; for example, in certain "Statutes made by the Reverend the Deane and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of St. Patrick, Dublin, for the government of the Viccars Choralls," it is ordered:

"VI. That every Viccar, att his first entrance into customed obeyance to the Deane.” the choire, doe behave himself reverently, and doe ac

from the shifting of the sands. Attempts were made to raise some of the cannon, but without success. An anchor was however recovered, of which a drawing is given. A. A. D.

Dress of the Clergy (Vol. vi., p. 99.).— The dress of the clergy, before the Reformation, was not, as far as I am aware, fixed by any ecclesiastical regulation. Their luxurious dresses are often attacked by the writers, especially the poets, of the Middle Ages. In a ballad of not later date than 1467 we hear of "prestis "—

"With your wyde fueryd hodes voyd of discrecion Un to your ouyn preachyng of contrary condition." who are bidden to

"Make shorter your taylis and broder your crownys, Leve your short stuffede dowblettes and your pleylid gownys."

Scarlet, however, seems to have been the most favourite colour with the priests, and on that account was especially ridiculed by the maligners of the clergy:

"Of scarlet and grene gaie gownes
That mote be shapin for the newe,
To clippen ond kissin in townes,

The damoseles that to the daunce sewe, Cuttid clothes to sewe the hewe, With longe pikis on ther shone: Our Godd'is gospell is not true, Either they serve the devill or none."† Much curious matter on this point, as well as all others connected with the domestic concerns of our ancestors, is to be found in the wills and inventories of the time. In that of Roger de Kyrkby, vicar of Gainford, published by the Surtees Society, there is mention made of more than one article of dress of a scarlet colour. It is probable that the Protestants were the more violent against the clergy for wearing scarlet dresses because they considered that colour symbolical of the "Babylonish apostacy.” K. P. D. É.

Virgilian Lots (Vol. vi., p. 77.).—The Editor's note is indeed "a very curious illustration" of the Sortes Virgilianæ; but it is hardly a direct answer to TECEDE's question, “What is the meaning of The Virgilian Lots?" Perhaps, therefore, the following extract from Dr. Smith's Antiquities (p. 1052.) may be found worth inserting :

"It was the practice to consult the poets in the same way that the Mohammedans do the Koran and Hafiz, and many Christians the Bible, namely, by opening the book at random, and applying the first passage that struck the eye to a person's own immediate circumstances. (S. Aug. Confess., iv. 3.) This practice was very common among the early Christians, who substituted the Bible and Psalter for Homer and Virgil:

Satirical Songs on Costume, p. 56. Percy Society, No. LXXXI.

†The Plowman's Tale.

many Councils repeatedly condemned these Sortes Sanctorum, as they were called. (Gibbon, Decline and Fall, xxxviii. Note 51.) The Sibylline Books were consulted in the same way."

TECEDE will find more on this curious subject in Prideaux's Connexion, vol. ii. pp. 309, 310. (Tegg's ed.)

Bingham says (b. xvi. c. v. § 3.):

"It appears that some of the inferior clergy, out of a base spirit and love of filthy lucre, encouraged this practice, and made a trade of it in the French church: whence the Gallican councils are very frequent in the condemnation of it."-Quoted in Southey's Common place Book.

I can vouch for this superstitious use of Scripture being by no means extinct, and this in the "higher classes." (Vol. vi., p. 6.) As a kindred bit of Folk Lore, I may add that the words of King Lemuel's mother, the last chapter of Proverbs, are often made to do duty in the divining line. The chapter is divided into thirty-one verses, one of which is appropriated to each day of the month; the response depends on which is the consulter's birthday. What is the history of this plan? The mystery was explained to me by an Italian Roman Catholic servant. A. A. D.

General Lambert (Vol. vi., p. 103.).—The following traces him a little later. In the Macclesfield Correspondence (vol. ii. p. 31.) is a letter from the Rev. Thomas Baker to Collins, as is supposed, dated Sept. 4, '78, which ends thus:

"Major-General Lambert, prisoner at Plymouth, hath sent me these problems to be solved. I desire the solutions of them (having sent mine to him): abcd

"Prob. 1.

"Sic transit gloria mundi" (Vol. vi., p. 100.). — "And therefore the master of the ceremonies, at the the one hath on the top a candle to kindle the other, Pope's inauguration, beareth two drie reeds, whereof

crying aloud unto the Pope,

'Sancte Pater, sic transit gloria mundi.' (Paradinus in Symbol.) "*

I transcribe the above passage from Boys' Works, p. 422. 1622, fol., but cannot help your correRr. spondent any further in his search. Warmington.

[* This work, by Claude Paradin, is entitled Symbola Heroica C. P. et Gabrielis Symeonis, de Gailica Lingua in Latinam conversa: Antv. 8vo. 1583.-ED.]

martyr:

He James First's son, the cousin of Elizabeth the Queen, First Mary's sister, sister she of Edward Sixth is seen; Who son of Henry Eighth was, he Henry Seventh's son, Cousin of Richard Third, from whom he crown and kingdom won;

He uncle dread of Edward Fifth, the son of Edward Four,

The cause of shame and sorrow both to the repentant Shore;

The cousin he of Henry Sixth, the son of Henry Five, Fourth Henry's son of Richard Second cousin, born to strive :

He grandson was of Edward Third, of Edward Second

Aghindle or Aghendole (Vol. vi., p. 9.). — The etymology of this word is from the Anglo-Saxon, and signifies the half-dole or divisional part, the measure being, as F. R. R. states, the fourth part of a peck. Spenser, in his Faery Queene, uses the word "Hafendeale" in the sense of a partition; and in Halliwell's Archæological Dictionary “halfendele" is given as the half, or half part. In Somerset a halfendeal garment is one composed of two different materials. In a marriage indenture dated 14th September, 1454, printed in Corrie's History of Lancashire, vol. ii. p. 645., it is covenanted by parties living in Rochdale parish, that, "After ye decesse of saide Xtofer Kyrschagh, ye saide Eleanor shall keepe reversion of halfundell of all the londes yt ever were ye saide Xtofer's, accordynge to dedes in taile beforetyme thereof made."

tained to be impracticable-the continuance of the Sinking Fund-is assumed by Sir A. Alison, who is so far wrong. The extinguishment of the National Debt by that fund would have required the taxation to have been increased about double; that is, raising it in round numbers from fifty to nearly one hundred millions sterling per annum for the twenty-seven years. It is, however, well known that Sinking Fund, the excessive expenses of the war were with difficulty defrayed by the Government; and in 1822 it was found necessary even to reduce the current expenses of the year by extending the charge of naval and military pensions over a long term of years, an arrangement partially forced the terms. The reduction of the National Debt on the Bank of England, other capitalists declining has proceeded, on the average of thirty-seven years, at the rate of about three millions annually; the principle being to apply surplus revenue only in reduction of debt, instead of borrowing to create a Sinking Fund. Comparing the national case to that of an individual,-suppose he, being in debt, reduces that debt by paying off 1000l. per annum, being clear savings out of his income, he in that case pursues the course now followed by the Government. On the principle of the Sinking Fund, however, he would go on borrowing of A., whom A. had transferred it, till the amount bought on the one hand, and buy up the debt from B., to up equalled the amount of debt incurred.

Bristol Road, Birmingham.

T. J. BUCKTON.

Punch and Judy (Vol. v., p. 610. ; Vol. vi., p. 43.). -N. B. does not adduce any authority for his tracing up Judy to Judas. I cannot adduce any authority for tracing it up to Judæi. Have we both adopted a mere oral tradition? Surely there must be many of the readers of "N. & Q." who can furnish us with a reference, if one exists?

BEOTICUS.

Rhymes on Places (Vol. v., p. 293., and passim.). - These rhymes may be, perhaps, worth adding to those which have been already collected by your contributors; one is on the river Dove and its fertilising properties:

Another is:

66

"In spring Dove's flood, Is worth a king's good."

Derbyshire born, and Derbyshire bred
Strong in the arms, and weak in the head."

It may be useful to note that in Derbyshire, which is always called by the natives of the county Darbyshire, except in the town of Derby itself, Dove is pronounced, not to rhyme to "love," as Wordsworth has it, but "Dwve."

The following rhyme stands at the head of the