his wife, which in virtue of magic gifts will turn length opened for me, and I copied the inscriptions yellow if she is tempted, and black if she yields. on two of the monuments. There is a playful yet The report of her virtues induces Honoria, the serious quaintness and impressiveness about them Queen of Hungary, who falls in love with Mathias, that may please others besides myself, and perhaps to send Ubaldo and Ricardo to tempt her. Putting merit a corner for these epitaphs in the pages of on one side some complications of no great interest," N. & Q." They are as follows:I come to the dénotment. Sophia is proof against all attacks, and, when she finds the object of the visit of the two courtiers, confines them in separate chambers, and compels them to earn their living by spinning. They are thus occupied when the king and queen arrive at the castle of Mathias. The piece ends with a caution to husbands,— "Which they should duly tender as their life, Neither to dote too much nor doubt a wife." The Picture was played at the Globe and Blackfriars Theatre about 1629. A version altered by the Rev. H. Bate was produced at Covent Garden, Nov. 8, 1783. De Musset leaves out the incident of the picture, and confines the action to the attempt of Astolphe de Rosemberg, a young Hungarian baron, to prevail over Barberine, the wife of Count Ulric, of Bohemia, who treats him after the fashion described in Massinger. De Musset's play is full of poetry and charm. The moral of Barberine, one on which De Musset was not in the habit of insisting, is delivered by Béatrix d'Arragon, Queen of Hungary, in the concluding words addressed to her court after she has read the letter in which Barberine has described her treatment of the Baron de Rosemberg : "Si vous riez de cette lettre, seigneurs chevaliers, 'Dieu garde vos femmes de malencontre. Il n'y a rien de si sérieux que l'honneur. Comte Ulric, jusqu'à demain nous voulons rester votre hôtesse, et nous entendons qu'on publie que nous avons fait le voyage exprès, suivie de toute notre cour, afin qu'on sache que le 'toit sous lequel habite une honnête femme est aussi >saint lieu que l'église, et que les rois quittent leurs palais pour maisons qui sont à Dieu." Some of your readers may be able to point to the earliest known version of the story whence it was taken by De Musset and by Painter. J. KNIGHT. EPITAPHS AT LUCERNE. Taking shelter lately in the Franciscaner-Kirche, at Lucerne, during a violent rainstorm, I caught sight, through the iron gates of a chapel opening into the north aisle, of some monuments that attracted my special attention; so much so that, the rain notwithstanding, I made my way to the adjoining "Kloster" in search of a Franciscan to unlock me the gates. I found, however, that their place knew "the lowly brethren of the Cord" no more; they had been banished from it years ago; and I could not but feel an emotion of regret that a "liberal" government should have been too illiberal to allow them to remain. I found neither monk nor churchman; but the chapel was at I. Quid sum Viator? Quod tu eris paulo ut Deus mihi ignoscat et lucem Etatis LXVI. Ann. MDCXCII. II. D. O. M. Lege Viator, et Luge; Fui ego JACOBUS BALTHASAR Sed mors me fecit esse minorem. Sed mors senatorem, et quidem jam senem Nec tamen sal a putredine me potuit præservare. Et hanc dignitatem mors mihi non eripuit, Sed jam nunc LXXV annorum seniculus Et anno MDCCXXXIII, die XXIX Januarij Exspecto carnis resurrectionem, Amen. Denato natI saXa hæC posVere parentI, his qVod non habeant saea CorDa probant. Each epitaph is headed with an escutcheon surmounted by a coronet. In the first of the two cases, the coronet, with grim humour, is again surmounted by a death's head, wearing plumes and adorned with mantling; and in the second case the escutcheon has supporters. There are points of resemblance between the two inscriptions; but the former appears to be the more elegant, the latter to have, with less animation, conceits somewhat more strained; and, as the interval in their dates is forty-one years, they are probably not by the same hand. Bedford Place. JOHN W. BONE, F.S.A. SHAKSPEARIANA. though he had not had ocular demonstration there “DAILY BEAUTY,” Othello, Act v. sc. 1, 11. 18-20: of as he had had of her sanctity, and he is con "If Cassio do remaine, He hath a dayly beauty in his life, That makes me ugly." In Prof. John Wilson's Dies Boreales (Blackwood, April, 1850), Talboys remarks: 66 "Shakespeare afterwards makes Iago say that Cassio 'has a daily beauty in his life.' Where do we see it? In his liaison with that 'fitchew'? From pleading with the divine Desdemona on a question to him of life or death, to go straight to sup-and sleep with Bianca !" It is incredible that Iago should have accorded such praise to a water-fly" like Cassio, whose only beauty was that of a scented dandy. I am so convinced of this, that I venture to broach a longguarded conjecture of my own, viz., that the printer dropped an n after y, in "dayly," and then converted the t into . We improve both sense and rhythm if we read "He hath a daynty beauty in his life.” Note that no moral excellence in Cassio would have been valued by Iago, nor could it have made him jealous. But Iago was a rough soldier, with none of the external graces which win smiles from fair women; whereas Cassio was a ladies' man, whose delicate beauty and courteous demeanour offered an intolerable contrast to the plain face and inanners of Iago. Athenæum Club. JABEZ. "OTHELLO,” ACT IV. SC. 2 (5th S. vi. 405.)—I was sorry to see a question raised by S. T. P. upon the meaning of a passage in the unmistakable patiencespeech of Othello. Previous to that speech, at the contemplation of Desdemona and her exceeding beauty and the apparent goodness of her beauty, and his own conviction of the falsehood of it all, and his great love wasted, and the pity of it, and the sorrow and the dishonour, he had given way as only a great and sterling soul could do to convulsive weeping. During that he hears not Desdemona's voice or its allusion to his recall to Venice. In the great abstraction of his grief Venice and its council have become as nothing. But the image of Job and his sufferings become present to his mind, and Job's patience, and his feeling that Job in all his trials had never been tried like that "Had it pleased heaven To try me with affliction; had they rained All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head," with surpassing subtlety concealed her actions not only from himself but from everybody, including her own close and by no means over-scrupulous attendant. Othello's experience would have taught him that neither the best nor worst of women are the passionate defenders, or defenders at all, of unchastity in any member of their sex : "And yet she 'll kneel and pray; I have seen her do 't." Othello had full belief in the falseness of his wife, founded at the possibility of the co-existence of habitual prayer with habitual evil. R. H. LEGIS. "MERCHANT OF VENICE," ACT v. sc. 1, LL, 63-65: First Folio. "Such harmonie is in immortall soules, But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close in it, we cannot heare it." "Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.' Common Reading. I respectfully submit, for the consideration of critics, that the folio is right as to the order of the words italicized, but that for in we should read on. The common reading cannot be right. We I do not close the music in, we shut it out. The "muddy vesture of decay"-the scriptural phrase "houses of clay" (Job iv. 19). Through our closed doors we cannot hear "the music of the spheres." R. M. SPENCE, M.A. TASMANIAN ABORIGINES.-Will it interest the readers of " N. & Q." to know the numbers and condition of the Tasmanian natives in the year 1844? The following is an extract from a journal kept by my late friend, George White of Melbourne : "June 26, 1844. Arrived at the Settlement on Flinders Island in Bass's Straits." This settlement was formed for the purpose of attempting to civilize the Van Diemen's Land natives, who were sent here, two hundred in number, all told, in the year 1834, since which period twenty more have been brought here. "Visited the blacks and found everything clean and comfortable; they were lodged in neat white-washed huts, each containing one room with a fireplace and bedstead. In front of the cottages are the church and jail, There are other comfortable buildings for the coxswain, neither of which presents any architectural beauties. catechist, and the army, consisting of one sergeant and two privates. Some ground has been cleared, and gardens made capable of supplying the settlement with vegetables, and the water used is brackish and unwholesome. The &c.; but the land about the settlement is generally poor, total number of inhabitants at present is eighty, namely, fifty-seven Van Diemen's Land Blacks and twenty-three manufacturing town, near Bolton, very well known; Whites; so that in ten years there has been a decrease the other a village near Prescot, not so well known. of 163 on a total of 220, or an average of sixteen and three- To "which of the twain" the honour should be tenths per annum. The greatest amount of deaths was Baines on its first establishment, and this is accounted for by assigned has hitherto not been clear. the sudden change in habits of life and diet, the Van (Hist. of Lanc.), Hook (Lives of Archbishops), and Diemen's Land Government at that time only supplying most of the principal writers on Lancashire hem with salt beef and flour. There have been eleven biography, have all assumed in favour of the superintendents in the course of ten years. The births former. Canon Raines, in his Notitia Cestriensis, have been very few; I only saw four children, two of them half casts, and it is evident a very few years will has almost, if not altogether, stood alone in consee the extinction of the race. They sing psalms, play tending for the latter A writer of a biographical at marbles, beg tobacco of visitors, and smoke as long as sketch of the Archbishop that appeared in a recent their supply lasts. Almost every night a corobbery is number of the Bolton Journal has been at some held, which is a kind of dramatic dance. "This strange wild dance of the aborigines of all parts pains to resolve the question, which he has been of New Holland as well as of Van Diemen's Land is alike enabled to do by searching the registers in both used on mystic, festive, and martial occasions. It is places. The registers of Bolton do not commence usually celebrated in the night by the light of large fires before 1587, so that nothing positive could be exwhich produce a highly wild and picturesque effect." pected from them. It was, however, found that See also Five Years in Australia Felix, Hamilton, the name of Bancroft does not appear in them Adams & Co., 1846. until a century and a half after the Archbishop's death. But those of Prescot fortunately commence in 1538, six years prior to the birth of the Archbishop. Two of the earliest entries record the marriage of "John Bancroft" and the baptism of "Christopher Bancroft," the father and elder brother of the prelate; while under the date of Sept., 1544, is the following:-"Ric. Bancroft, sone unto John Bancroft, bapt. the xii. daiy.” This at once determines the birthplace of the Archbishop. Farnworth, near Bolton, that for so long has enjoyed the honour of such, must now surrender the credit to Farnworth, near Prescot. At the same time, the opinion of the writer of Notitia Cestriensis, as opposed to that of the majority of Lancashire writers, has received_the most unmistakable confirmation. Bethlem Hospital. G. H. HAYDON. A DESCRIPTION OF THE TURKS TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO. The subjoined account of the Turks as given by Speed (v. A Prospect of the most famous Parts of the World, &c., 1676, p. 35) is somewhat remarkable as exhibiting the Turks of that day in a light, morally at least, in which, rightly or wrongly, they are still regarded by a large number of the people of this country. But the more important feature of this description, and which seems worthy of especial note, is that which points to their behaviour when in camp or in the fight, characteristics which, now universally acknowledged, pre-eminently distinguish the great Turkish army of to-day : They are for the most part broad-faced, strong-boned, well proportioned, of gross understanding, idly disposed, base-minded, slaves to themselves and their superiors in their own Country: yet ignorantly proud, and contemptuous of other Nations, which they take in foul scorn should be compared with their Inhabitant. "They pass not to couzen a Christian in their course of traffick nor do they think they are bound to keep promise unless it make for their advantage. The greatest praise they have by due desert is their strict obedience to their Discipline of War: no sedition, no tumult, no chat in their Camp or March, in so much that oft times many thousands on a suddain surprise their enemies unawares, with 80 very little noise as not to be heard in their approach. "No difficulty can be commanded which they are not ready to perform, without any respect at all had to the danger, be it to pass Rivers, scale Walls, stand Centinel: in brief, they care not to eat or sleep in War, but at full leisure and are the truest military men upon earth." Nottingham. F. D. THE BIRTHPLACE OF ARCHBISHOP BANCROFT.— "Farnworth, in Lancashire," was the birthplace of this prelate, according to the testimony of all authorities. Unfortunately, however, there are two Farnworths in the county-one a considerable W. D. P. TELEGRAPHIC CURIOSITIES.-I have seen a telegram in which the following words occurred:"De Honorificabilitudinitatibus gentis Yturrimitted without the slightest mistake. The last of bérrigórrigóytaerrótacoechéa." They were transthe words quoted is said to be a Basque patronymic. Extraordinary as the two long words are,-the former consisting of thirteen, the latter of sixteen, syllables,-I am told that they are not the longest that have passed over the electric wire, a word occupying three lines, and containing a hundred and seven letters, having been telegraphed. I in transmitting (or rather, I presume, immediately have heard that, in Cornwall, mining speculators, after transmitting) important news to London, with orders to buy or sell mining shares, have sometimes telegraphed messages containing long and perplexing Cornish names, and required them to be "repeated" back to the senders; their object being to occupy the wires for a few minutes so as to prevent the sending of rival messages. JOHN W. BONE, F.S.A. VAILS.-I doubt not that the experience of the last autumn has convinced many of your readers, if they had any doubt on the subject, that the discussion of this heavy tax, in the Times and other papers a year or two ago, has had little effect upon it. For example, we still hear the offer of a good day's shooting being refused because it is known that the head keeper can accept nothing but “paper.” However, the following little story shows, I think, more clearly than anything I remember reading, that the evil was quite as serious in the last century, and that it was not even mitigated by the little air of mystery which is affected in our time. I take the narrative from an excellent work of its kind, but one of interest so very local as to have been seen, probably, by few of the readers of " N. & Q." About the middle of the last century the last laird of the old family of Hamilton of Kilbrachmont, in Fifeshire, was a certain Robbie Hamilton. Long before his death, in 1769, he had run through his estate, and was in very straitened circumstances. "After a party at Kellie Castle the guests were passing through the hall where the servants were drawn up to receive their vails......the gifts of those who preceded Robbie drew forth no expression of gratitude, not even a smile; but when his turn came for performing the ceremony their features at once lighted up with something approaching to a laugh. What did you give the fellows, Robbie?' said his friends, when they got outside; they looked as sour as vinegar till your turn came.' Deil a bawbee they got frae me,' said Robbie, ‘I just kittled their loof!"" (i.e. tickled their palm). I commend the expedient to any who may have the hardihood to try it. A. FERGUSSON, Lieut.-Col. GEORGE, LORD RODNEY.-About ten miles from Shrewsbury rises abruptly from a beautiful level champaign country, watered by the Severn, a chain of hills called the Breiddin, reminding one forcibly of the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, and from the summit of which a magnificent prospect of a similar kind is obtained, though not of "twelve fair counties." A tall pillar or column is erected on one of the peaks in order to commemorate the celebrated victory gained by the distinguished Admiral Lord Rodney, at that time Sir George Brydges Rodney, over the Count de Grasse, in the West Indian seas, in 1782. As the ancient rhyme runs : "Bold Rodney made the French to rue The twelfth of April, eighty-two." It will be recollected that a large monument is erected in the north transept of Westminster Abbey, at the public expense, to the memory of three of his gallant captains, who gloriously fell in that engagement, and whose medallions, of large size, are sculptured upon it-William Bayne, William Blair, and Lord Robert Manners. Near it is the grave of one of England's greatest statesmen, Lord Palmerston. *The East Neuk of Fife, by the Rev. Walter Wood, A.M., ed. 1862. Many years ago, in the parlour of a small inn in the neighbourhood, I saw an engraving of the pillar, and on the margin underneath it was mentioned that suitable inscriptions were engraved on the pillar in Welsh, Latin, and English, but several times on my visits to it I have looked for them in vain. The pillar is circular in form, and rises from a square substructure, which forms its base. On my last visit, the epigram occurred to my mind written on the occasion of Rodney receiving the freedom of the City of London in a gold box, whilst it was given to Admiral Keppel, about the same time, in an oaken one, the former being at the time in pecuniary difficulties, and the latter was supposed to be scarcely as courageous as he might have been under the enemy's fire :"Your wisdom, London's Council, far Our highest praise exceeds, In giving to each generous tar The very thing he needs. For Rodney, brave, but low in cash, You golden gifts bespoke; To Keppel, rich, but not so rash, You gave a heart of oak." Was it owing to Lord Rodney having been a native of those regions that this pillar was erected, or had he some local connexion with them? Conjecture could perhaps point to something of the kind. These questions have been often asked in the neighbourhood, but no satisfactory or reliable answers have ever been returned in reply to them. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A. Maltby, near Rotherham. AN EXTRAORDINARY BLUNDER IN GIBSON'S "CAMDEN."-On p. 494 of the second edition of Gibson's Camden is an account of a silver plate found at Sutton, near Ely, bearing what Gibson calls a "Dano-Saxon inscription." Gibson gives a translation of this inscription, omitting the first three words, which "the learned person to whom the plate was submitted ingenuously confessed himself unable to understand," but which he supposed to be some sort of magical gibberish. The "learned person's" rendering is as follows: about with him. Grant him whatever he desires.” "O Lord, Lord, him always defend who carries me Fortunately, however, the description is supplemented by an engraving of the relic, which displays in singularly legible characters the following pure Anglo-Saxon legend : "Eduwen me ag age hyo drihten drihten hine awerie de me hire atferie buton hyo me selle hire agenes willes him curse who carries me away from her, unless she ("duwen owns me; may the Lord own her; the Lord give me away of her own will "). I have not the opportunity of ascertaining whether this strange blunder is perpetuated or corrected in subsequent editions of Camden, but it is worth noting as an indication of the state of Anglo-Saxon scholarship in the early part of the Is the relic known to be still in pleases, without being subject to the restraint of particular laws. Hence it is grown to contain above 50,000 inhabitants, a number that can be match'd in very few of our cities." Of the decline of trade at Colchester he says: "When I was there, some of the old master-weavers told me this town alone had, within their memory, returned 30,000l. weekly for the stuffs there manufac tured, which were sold chiefly to the Spaniards. I asked them how much the return might be at this time, but could get no other answer than Next to nothing, Sir,’ and a melancholy shake of the head." RALPH N. JAMES. Ashford, Kent. CENTENARIANS IN THE AUGUSTAN AGE.-Tibullus (lib. iv. ad Messallam) wrote of some hardy enemies : last century. existence? CAMDEN CORROBORATED.—I have met with two instances which corroborate Camden's account of the the superstitions of the native Irish, and prove tenacity of their hold upon the lower order of the race. He says, "If they never lend out fire to their neighbours it adds length to life." To lend out fire is common enough in Ireland, where I have often seen women and girls running from their neighbours' cabins with a bit of red turf smoking in a wisp of straw. But I have just heard of a London woman going to take a light from the fire of an Irish neighbour, in whose room lay a sick child, and who was sternly and peremptorily repulsed, under the idea that to take a portion of the light away would take from the life of the child. Camden also mentions a species of divination by looking through a blade-bone of a sheep : "If they find it dark in any part, they think it A lady portends a funeral out of that family." long resident in Greece informed me that at the present day the Greeks use the blade-bone of a lamb, held up against the light, as a means of foretelling events; and an Irish servant, who in her youth had recourse to the formula, tells me that the peasant girls seek on the hill sides and in the fields the weather-bleached blade-bone of a sheep, "THE SPIT OF HIS FATHER."-Cp. French, "C'est which kept till the moon is at the full, and stabbed son père tout craché" ("He's the very image of Créwith a knife at midnight, while the following con- his father"). See passage from Voltaire. juration is repeated, is potent to recall the affec-pinade in Littré (sub voce "Craché "). tion of a wavering or neglectful lover : "It is not this bone I mean to stick, Until he comes with me to speak." If by any means the bone can be placed under the pillow of the lover, the charm will be more ENILORAC. efficacious. TRADE AT LEEDS, MANCHESTER, AND COLCHESTER, IN 1746.-In The Travels of Tom Thumb over England and Wales, London, 1746, are the following observations. He says, when at Leeds : "I lay in the town a week, to observe the tuesday's and saturday's market, which lasts only one hour each morning, beginning at six in the summer and seven in the winter. It is amazing to see with what facility and method the great number of tressels are brought out, the cloths laid upon them, and all or a great part disposed of. In the two hours that I was a spectator of these markets, I was informed that near fifty thousand pounds were dealt for, and all without the least hurry or disturbance, the seller telling the price in a low voice, and he that comes to buy agreeing or disagreeing in few words. The cloth market being over. the linnen-drapers, hardware men and shoemakers, take the place of the clothiers." "Testis Arupinus et pauper natus in armis, CURIOUS CHRISTIAN NAME.-In the Times of Jan. 12, 1875, "Fruizeannah" Lowe appears as a defendant at one of the police courts. Wadham College, Oxford. P. J. F. GANTILLON. A. L. MAYHEW, M.A. I THE WINE OF THE BIBLE.-Are there any grounds for supposing that the wine mentioned in the Old Testament as used by the Jews, and in the New as used by our Lord and his apostles and the early Christians generally, was of an unAbout a twelvemonth ago intoxicating nature? read some learned letters in a provincial newspaper from a correspondent who maintained this view, and whose arguments, as he appeared to know Hebrew, were entitled at any rate to consideration. He said that there are nine names for wine in the Hebrew Scriptures, the principal of which are yayin, shekar, and tirosh; that the first two of these were intoxicating, and by implication (though he admitted he could not put his finger on particular prohibitory passages) forbidden to the Jews; this he positively asserted. Tirosh, he said, was not intoxicating, and it was accordingly lawful for the Jews to use it. With regard to the |