Mount Grace in Churton's 'Monastic Ruins of Yorkshire,' and the plan above alluded to, drawn to scale by Mr. Riley, gives a better idea of the ruins than any description could possibly do. My late friend Thomas Adolphus Trollope, in his What I Remember' (vol. ii.), has recorded a description of a visit paid by him in 1861, in company with G. H. Lewes and George Eliot (Mrs. Lewes) to a Carthusian monastery, then in existence and flourishing-Camaldoli in the Apennines, in Italy. It is interesting and valuable as showing Carthusianism at the present day, or rather within our own memory. The able pen of the writer does full justice to the abilities of the compagnons de voyage who accompanied him on the pilgrimage, though not made on foot, but on horseback. In regard to George Eliot, the author of 'Adam Bede,' who possessed a mind like "wax to receive and marble to retain," he observes, "Think of the delight in passing in companionship with such a mind through scenes and circumstances entirely new to it." Of her husband, G. H. Lewes, he says that "he was a most delightful companion, the cheeriest of philosophers. The old saying of 'Comes jucundus in viâ pro vehiculo est' was especially applicable to him." Females were not allowed to enter the Sagro Eremo, and consequently George Eliot (Mrs. Lewes) was obliged to find quarters for the night in a chamber over the cowhouse, a humble little forestieria. They found the Carthusians leading an eremitical life, not a conventual one, "each brother inhabiting his own separately built cell, consisting of sleeping chamber, study, wood-room, and garden, all of microscopical dimensions. His food, exclusively vegetable, is passed in to him by a little turntable made in the wall." But the whole description is so graphic that I cannot do better than recommend the perusal of it to your readers in the above-mentioned book. As an inscription upon the title-page of What I Remember' might be written the Horatian lines :Quo fit ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita senis. The poet Thomas Gray has given us a beautiful ode in Latin alcaics on his visit to the Chartreux in Dauphiny, founded by St. Bruno in 1084, and suitable in many ways to Camaldoli : Oh Tu, severi Religio loci, Quocunque gaudes nomine (non leve) Numen habet, veteresque sylvas; Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge. THE REV. JAMES STERLING. A bookseller, who knows that everything relating to St. Paul's Cathedral has an interest for me, has just sent me 'The Poetical Works of the Rev. James Sterling' (8vo., Dublin, 1734). Turning over its leaves to discover the piece which was likely to interest me, I find first some minor poems, then a long and pretentious work, with a separate title-page, entitled 'The Loves of Hero and Leander, from the Greek of Museus'; and presently I arrive at the following effusion :— Written Extempore in the Gallery over the Dome of the Cathedral of St. Paul, London. No more, amaz'd, Rome's theatres survey, And multiplies the never-dying sound! Pp. 128-130 I fear that the severer critics will at once cry out upon this doggerel. Even the grandiloquent line, With ambient lead the beamy rafters groan will scarcely save it from their censure; though really it is nearly as fine as that,— As streams meander level with their fount, on which Macaulay exercised so much caustic severity. Nor will the description of the cross which surmounts the ball, as Two burnish'd piles aloft in transverse gold, nor that of the marble saints which Fatigue the sight, and awe the town below, arrest their judgment; nor even the hollow winds which blow in reverend horrors" (whatever they may be), and then fly In tempests independent of the sky avail to save the poem, though really that is a very remarkable line, and rich in utter oommonplace. I would fain know something more about the poet. He seems to have written several prologues and epilogues, notably "An Epilogue spoken by Mrs. Sterling on her quitting the Stage"; and he also wrote a tragedy called The Rival Generals,' in five acts, "Acted at the Theatre Royal in Dublin by His Majesty's Servants"; but I have not had the courage to read it, though the author says that it met with "uncommon applause" upon the stage. "James Forth, Esq., late Secretary to the Hon. Commissioners of the Customs and Excise," wrote a prologue to it, spoken by Mr. Elrington, on King William's birth-night; and Col. John Allen wrote an epilogue, spoken by Mr. Giffard. I think that the play would very likely reward perusal, as on the first page I read And the east blushes with unusual purple; and a little further on The great success glutted big expectation; and an apostrophe to woman, He cer Thou soul of man! by whom we know we're men. Who was the Rev. James Sterling? tainly allowed himself a licence, in his Loves of Hero and Leander,' which would not be tolerated to-day in any clergyman. Did the play live? And who was the Mrs. Sterling who retired from the stage with his lines upon her lips-not altogether a swan song, but a little better than some of the other effusions? Surely "ambient lead" is very fine-quite what our neighbours call "high falutin'," when it is remembered that the covering of the dome is the object commemorated! W. SPARROW SIMPSON. G. A. SALA.—As 'N. & Q.' is taken as a record, I would, whilst bearing testimony to the marvellous memory of Sala, in his autobiographical jottings, observe that, whilst in the main correct, he sometimes fails, as he charges Sir Edward Lawson with doing, when giving an inventory of the Sala habiliments upon the occasion of his first interview with the proprietor of the Daily Telegraph. Reference was not the correspondent's forte, and, as he carried his library in his head, minor details sometimes suffered for instance, in describing the doings on a memorable Saturday (7 March, 1863) some thirty years after the event, he is not quite exact. When the Prince of Wales brought his bride to town, I met Sala and Rumsey Forster-the Telegraph and Post-upon London Bridge, and walked between the two to Temple Bar, escaping the dangers at the Mansion House. At that period the City and the Metropolitan Police were not in accord, separate passes being required by both, that were challenged at the confines of the City. We had passed as the Three Mousquetaires thus far, when G. A. Sala was terribly attacked by the police, and driven back, his linen disarrayed, and his coat torn, to return to the Telegraph office, and then and there to write a tirade against the "force" astonishing to read now. In his 'Memoirs' he charges me with exciting the ire of the police by wearing a green coat and and carried no crop, though I had a large white carrying a hunting crop. I wore no coloured coat waterproof cape and a cane, expecting to find my horse in Hyde Park. At Paddington Station Rumsey Forster (the "Jenkins" of Punch) went with the royal pair to Windsor, I returning, in a deluge of rain, to dress for a civic repast at 7.30, where I fell asleep from fatigue between two ladies, who failed to win their gloves for fear of awakening the dormant, two courses being lost by the lapse. Sala tells of how Thackeray mistook him for myself, doubtless because we both published at the same house (Ackermann, in the Strand), his 'Great Exhibition Wot is to Be' being broad comic and my 'Rejected Contributions' more in serio than jest. At that period Sala was painting at Soyer's Symposium in Gore House, I helping Owen Jones in the arrangement of the first World's JOHN LEIGHTON, F.S.A. Show in 1851. SUICIDE. Ship Valeur, being distracted, stabbed himself with his "Mr. Henry Burton, late Chaplain to His Majesty's sword at a poor Cottage on Bromley Com'on; but coming to himself was very Penitent and continued so for a fortnight after his wounds were in a fair way of Recovery, but he ventured abroad and caught cold and relapsed into ye like plurisy and Asthma, wch he had before the unhappy accident. All wch circumstances being considered and ye Coroner's Inquest thereupon burial, Feb. 23, 1716-7, I visiting him under this misacquitting of self murder, he was allowed Christian fortune. He desired to be buried at Keston."-Parish Register of Keston, co. Kent. Eden Bridge. C. E. GILDERSOME-DICKINSON. KITCHEN-MIDDENS. (See 'The Yule of Saxon Days,' 8th S. viii. 481.) The supposition of E. STREDDER that the kitchen-middens are the remains of mid-winter festivities can hardly be correct, the contents of these mounds consisting of implements of the neolithic age only (flint celts, saws, scarpers, borers, fish-hooks, gorgets, &c.), there being present no bronze or iron implements whatever, while the only domesticated animal that has been found is the dog, the horse (which was well known to the Danes) not occurring. Again, the middens were formed anterior to 1000 BC., while the piratical excursions of the Danes did not commence until after the beginning of our era. These rubbish heaps, too, are not confined to the shores of the Baltic, but occur on sea-coasts all over the world-from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, and from Scandinavia to Tasmania. D. TAYLOR. Stratford, E. TURKS ON LUNDY ISLAND. (See 8th S. viii. 440.) -The writer of the notice of Mr. Worth's History of Devonshire' asks, "Are we to understand that when Charles I. was king the island [of Lundy] was really for some years in the undisputed possession of the children of Islam?" In the late Mr. J. R. Chanter's descriptive and historical monograph on Lundy Island it is stated that on 18 Aug., 1625, the Mayor of Bristol reported that three Turkish pirates had taken possession of the island and had threatened to burn Ilfracombe. This, it is said, was denied by Capt. Harris, commander of the king's ship Phoenix. Government, it would seem, ordered an inquiry, and among the depositions taken was one from a certain Nicholas Cullen, who testified that the Turks had taken about sixty men out of a church in Cornwall, carrying them away prisoners. Cullen further testified that he saw the pirate ship lying off Lundy Island, and that the Turks were in possession for a fortnight. By the reviewer's query I am reminded that in the old vestry books of this parish there are occasional entries of payments to men who had been in captivity among Moors or Turks. For example, in the churchwardens' accounts for 1649, occur the entries: "Towards the relief of John Musainne which was taken in Turkey and had a certificate, 2s. 4d." "Towards the reliefe of William Bickence of Instowe which was taken in Turkey, 1s." engraving of Blackfriars Bridge, with a figure descending feet first, and underneath "The Leap from Blackfriars, 1805," which makes me put the date at 1806. In reviewing some publication of Mr. Tegg's without his name, the Poetical Register, 1810, strongly advised him to give up writing and stick to bookselling, advice he did not adopt; but it would appear that this on swimming was the only publication he put his name to. In 1806 he was thirty; he died in 1846. The author (James Grant) of Portraits of Public Characters,' 1841, gives a notice of Tegg (full of bibliopole in the United Kingdom." Whether errors), in which he says he was "the wealthiest this is as wrong as some of his other statements I cannot say. As Tegg would have been Lord Mayor if he had had the health, I think we may conclude he had the wealth. Grant also says, "I am not aware that his name has in any instance been given on the title-page as the writer," so he evidently was not acquainted with the swimming pamphlet. It only paged to page 9, then follow fourteen fullseems to have been published without covers; it is page engravings, and one not paged-forty pages altogether. assist me in identifying some of the authors to whom The object of this note is to ask your readers to Alderman Tegg refers. For example, Who was Dr. Fuller, who wrote 'Gymnastic Medicine'?"Major advice of an old negro, in constantly bathing, Stedman attributes [where?] to his following the the preservation of his life in the unhealthy and tion to Surinam in 1777." I shall be obliged for swampy campaigns he passed in the Dutch expediI have identified the other quotations Tegg gives. Where can an account of chapter and verse. the leap from Blackfriars Bridge be found? In A Present for an Apprentice,' second edition, 1848, Tegg has a few words in praise of swimming; but there is no mention of his pamphlet. RALPH THOMAS. "PRINTERY."-I note in the issue of Sketch, In the accounts for 1653 appear entries of two shillings "paid to 5 men that were taken in Tur-4 Dec., 1895, p. 287, an account of the destruction key," and one shilling "to a poore man that was taken by the Turks." These are indications of the chances to which dwellers on our western coasts were then subject. F. JARRATT. Goodleigh Rectory, N. Devon. ALDERMAN TEGG ON SWIMMING.-This wellknown bookseller wrote various books, most of which have probably got into the British Museum Library, where, however, I do not find the following: "The Art of Swimming. By Thos. Tegg. [Here is a cut of two figures swimming in a hurricane which nearly obscures a lighthouse, and underneath is] 'Now, messmate, what do you think of swimming? We shall soon be out of danger. London: Published by Thos. Tegg, No. 111, Cheapside. Price One Shilling." It has no date, but opposite the title-page is an by fire of Messrs. Unwin's printing establishments at Chilworth, wherein they are described as a "printery." Surely the good old term "printing office" is far better than this Yankeeism. "Printery" somehow savours of "piggery." ROBERT BURNINGHAM. A LONG RECORD.-The following appeared in the Inquirer of 7 Dec., 1895, "On 29 November, at Belfast, Sarah Thompson (Sally), in her ninetyseventh year, the faithful friend of the McCaid and Nelson family, with whom she lived for eightythree years." R. F. S. TENNYSON AND JOSEPH WARTON.-In the Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble,' p. 178, I read: "Tennyson once said that 'Lycidas' was a touchstone of poetical taste." Tennyson must have been quoting Joseph Warton, who said, PUBLIC EXECUTIONS.-In 'N. & Q.,' 8th S. iv. 404, there is a note by me on the benefits which our forefathers supposed to flow from causing schoolboys to be spectators of the hanging of criminals. When I wrote it I had forgotten that Sir Walter Scott had borne testimony to this custom being not unknown in Scotland. In 'The Heart of Midlothian' Mr. Saddletree is represented as saying :— "I promised to ask a half play-day to the schule, so that the bairns might gang and see the hanging, which canna but have a pleasing effect on their young minds, seeing there is no knowing what they may come to them: selves."-Chap. xxvi. Sir Walter would not, we may assume, have written the above had he not known that such things had actually taken place. EDWARD PEACOCK. Dunstan House, Kirton-in-Lindsey. "RISUM TENEATIS, AMICI?" This familiar expression from Horace's 'Ars Poetica' is given in the Stanford Dictionary' with the faulty translation, "Restrain (your) laughter, friends." Of course the translation ought to be, "Could you restrain your laughter, friends?" Horace writes: Spectatum admiɛsi risum teneatis, amici ? Two quotations are given: "The authority of the SIR SIDNEY SMITH'S ESCAPE FROM PARIS.Capt. (afterwards Admiral) Pleville le Pelley has left memoirs, still unpublished, which give the following account of Sir S. Smith's escape from the Temple : Sidney Smith had been detained as a state prisoner and then as a prisoner of war. England offered 4,000 French prisoners for him. I hastened to the Directory, to inform them of this tempting proposal. It was rejected. Some time afterwards I learned that the English prisoner was allowed to go about Paris. I complained to the governor, and insisted that he should be closely watched. The Minister of Police received orders accordingly. We next learned that Pitt had thrown into prison all the captains and officers who had been on parole. I informed the Directory of this, but they gave no answer......Six days after I had quitted the ministry, was announced that Sidney Smith had escaped, and next day a justice of the peace brought me half a sheet of paper, stamped Bureau des Prisonniers de Guerre,' upon which was written: Requisition to hand over Sidney Smith to the officer and troop bearers hereof, who will conduct him to Fontainebleau. Dated 8 Floréal, signed Pleville de Pelley, but quite at the foot of the letter, Paris. A "PITCH" OF NEWSPAPERS.-Following on so closely some remarks in N. & Q.' relative to the application of the word "pitch" as regards cheese exposed for sale at a market, it was interesting to come across in a newspaper an account of St. James (London) vestrymen discussing (21 Nov.) a request that had been made to them for permission to erect in the streets some kiosks for the sale of newspapers. These kiosks I gather were to supersede those unlicensed stalls the presence of which is familiar in most great thoroughfares. The request was unfavourably received; one vestryman saying, "He would like to see all the present newspaper pitches' rated. At the 'pitch' outside the Burlington Arcade, in Piccadilly, more newspapers were sold than at newsgents' shops in the parish, yet the owner of the 'pitch' was not rated." The verb "to pitcb," the assumed monopoly of the cheese vendor, seems peculiarly adaptive to the circumstances of the al fresco newsvendor. Urmston, Manchester. RICHARD LAWSON. "PESSIMISM."-It is usual to regard pessimism as a word of the nineteenth century, and to conviews of life advocated by weeping philosophers, sider that its special function is to denote the from Heraclitus to Schopenhauer. Dictionaries define it in accordance with this limitation; one, e.g., says that the system comprises "the doctrines of those who teach that everything exists for the worst, and who persist in looking upon the worst side of everything" (Stormonth). Ogilvie's 'Imperial Dictionary' of 1850 does not contain the term at all, although it gives pessimist, with the definition "One who complains of everything; one who maintains that the present state of things only tends to evil." The Encyclopaedic Dictionary enters pessimism, pessimist, pessimistic, pessimistical, pessimize, all with reference to the worldsorrow and its depressing exponents. Now, pessimism must have been used in the days of Coleridge's youth, or Coleridge himself must have invented and employed it, with a significance that it retains no longer. Writing to Southey, in 1794, he refers to an Elegy' of Southey's sent to him, of which its author appears to have been enamoured, and goes on: "I think it the worst thing you ever wrote...... Why, 'tis almost as bad as Lovell's Farmhouse, and that would be at least a thousand fathoms deep in the dead sea of pessimism."-Letters of 8. T. Coleridge,' i. 115. As a designation of the great and unspeakable gathering of all the worst that has been said and thought, this is not without merit. But for the tearful fraternity, whose hold is now secure, the "dead sea of pessimism" might have been a convenient phrase in the art of criticism. Helensburgh, N.B. Queries. THOMAS BAYNE. WILL OF CROMWELL.-Did Oliver Cromwell, the Protector, make a will; if so, was it ever proved? Where could a copy be had? No record at Doctors' Commons. W. R. BRADSHAW. OIL PAINTING.-I have a very fine picture, signed "E 1747." Subject: in the foreground Infant Jesus in Mary's lap; to her right Joseph with ass and mothering bag, to left angel (?) presenting fruit to infant. Overhead cherubim presenting fruit to Mary (fruit resemble large cherries); background, landscape with shepherd and sheep in the distance. The limbs and faces of the figures are beautifully modelled. I should like to know what artist used that signature; and for any information respecting the picture I should be very grateful. LADY BETTY. "CHINESE SENSITIVE LEAF."-I shall be grateful to any reader who can give me information as to a material known as "Chinese sensitive leaf," of which a few fragments have come into my possession. It is a delicate papery substance, possessing a remarkable bygroscopic quality, by which it curves violently away from a moist surface. It was formerly used for making toys; thus, a figure of a man is cut out from a sheet of Chinese leaf, which, when placed on the hand, writhes and contorts itself in a curious way. My fragments came from such a toy, which had lain forgotten for something like a century in an old Welsh manor house. The envelope in which it was contained bore a statement that the material was invented by Jan Pertista, and was sold by G. Cheese, of Bristol. One of my objects in writing is to learn, if possible, how I may obtain a further supply of "leaf," which I find exactly suitable for the construction of a hygrometer for certain botanical FRANCIS DARWIN. experiments. Wychfield, Cambridge. [We remember well, some threescore years ago, a design of the knave of hearts in this material. Some kind of mystic significance was supposed to attach itself to the way in which it curled when laid on the palm of the hand.] THE SHRINE OF ST. AUDREY AT ELY.-Cole, in his 'MSS., Brit. Museum,' vol. xviii. p. 95, states that Henry VII. and his son Henry VIII. came on devotion to the shrine of St. Audrey at Ely. He gives no authority for this statement. What is the date of this visit; and where is the C. BUTLER. account of it to be found? Ely. GRAMMATICAL: "MORE THAN ONE."- The other day I wrote in a publication of established importance and authority that of certain things more than one was worthy of notice, or something to a similar effect. Though passed in proof, this was altered in the page to were worthy of notice. I hold that, as a sentence, more than one requires a singular verb. Am I right;_or_do more than one " require a plural ? H. T. CAPT. AUSTIN.-Is anything known of the above as Provost or Governor of Aberdeen in the days of the Pretender? His crest was the Paschal Lamb; and family tradition says that, knowing bankers that if they should receive his plate-chest, himself to be suspected, he gave orders to his it was to be put on board the first vessel sailing for the Continent. The chest, which had holes in the lid, was kept in a hall. Here Capt. Austin and his wife were breakfasting one morning, when a party of soldiers arrived to arrest him. He had just time to get into the chest, his wife putting in she was sitting upon it. On their departure, the his cup, plate, &c., and when the soldiers entered chest was sent to the bankers and put on board a ship sailing for Holland. Capt. Austin married a Rachel Fraser, cousin of Simon Fraser, also of the Earl of Sutherland, and of Mrs. Ramsay, daughter of Sir A. Lindsay of Evelick, and wife of the artist. Their daughter, Jane Austin, saw Simon's head on Temple Bar when she came to stay with Mrs. Ramsay, at whose house she met her future husband, Philip Reinagle. Who was |