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NOTES:-An Unpublished Letter of Beaumarchais, 1-The Epiphany Agape of the Church of Osimo-A Fragment of English History, 3-The Star of the Magi, 4-Edmund Halley-Bullock Carts-A French Tichborne Case, 5-Sole- cisms in Writing-Mr. Ruskin on Poetry-The Beckford Library Sale-The Word "Tory"—A Fielding Relic, 6. QUERIES: - Yoole - Girthol: Yoole - Githe, 6-Hookes's "Amanda," 1653-Cumeling-"The Economy of Provi- dence" - Medals, 7-Cirencester-Bushy-points-"Calf's- head Roll -All Souls-Selby-Old Licensing Law-Sir G. Cross-"Speeding the parting guest"-Raleigh House, 8- Trowbridge — Bogie - The Critics-Heraldic Anomalies - "Ezekiel Culverwell: a Treatise of Faith," 9. REPLIES:-Beef-eater, 9-St. Cuthbert's MS. of St. John's Gospel, 11-The Death of Hampden-A Yorkshire Ghost Story, 12-F. B. Solvyns-Rubens and Title-pages-Sir J. Lequesne-An Antique Brooch-The Naval Brigade in the City, 13-Acilegna-Hedge or Edge-The Three R's-The Aldine Symbol-Fowling Layer, 14-Meggott Family Cameo-T. Churchyard-Tennis, 15-Schiller's "Pegasus im Joche"-Wagonette-The Lumber Troop, 16-Hair growing after Death-Portrait of Dante, 17-A Yard of Beer-Gray's Inn Registers-Scoperil-Buried Alive-"Ho thy way"- Butler's "Hudibras "-Ogress, 18. NOTES ON BOOKS:-"The Salon of Madame Necker"- Leslie Stephen's," Swift "-Traill's "Sterne-Crane's "Art tinguished diplomat and minister the Comte de Vergennes, who was, during the last few years of his life, and therefore at the period at which this letter was written, President of the Council of Finance. The M. d'Ormesson who is mentioned in the letter was Henri-François de Paule le Fèvre d'Ormes- son, who, having succeeded his father in the administration of the Maison de Saint-Cyr, im- in which he transacted the business of his post coming to my aid; and now, at the moment when I You do not wish that I should perish. I only ask for In the name of honour and of your benevolence, write, As I was myself to be the bearer of your reply, be so subject which I had the honour to mention to you last Anything new which throws a little additional * Paris, April 17, 1783. on M. d'Ormesson: I arranged with him that he should write to you this morning, and that, on my part, I should go to Versailles, bearing to himself your anewer. But my fever has increased to such a degree that I can scarce see what I am writing, within my bed- The mortification of finding myself in this extremity, without having yet succeeded in concluding anything about my wretched claims, and my liabilities now due, have deprived me of repose. Then, at the last moment, comes this fever, which completes the work; and on Saturday I must pay a sum, which I do not possess and cannot I present to the king the homage of the perusal of the manuscript which I have already given you add to it this document, proving the truth of the facts, and put it at the page on which the writer treats of the war of 1743, which you will easily find. If it amuses the king to read this, and if his Majesty would like to have, in con- fidence, some other hitherto unknown portions of the great portfolio, I shall make it my duty and my pleasure, both for your and for his sake, to extract some other Save my honour for me, I beg of you, by bidding M. d'Ormesson make this temporary but necessary head throbs like a forge, and anxiety redoubles my fever. I am, with the most unalterable devotion, my Lord, Monsieur Le Comte* Paris ce 17 avril 1783. blant la fièvre, chez M. D'Ormesson: Je convins avec hier au Soir je me trainai, tremlui qu'il vous ecrirait ce Matin, et que de mon coté Je me rendrais a Versailles pour lui rapporter a lui mesme votre réponse. Mais ma fievre a redoublé a tel point que Je vois a peine ce que J'ecris dans mes rideaux. pu finir encore sur mes tristes réclamations, et mes Le chagrin de me voir enfin aux abois, sans avoir rien moment, voila la fievre qui couronne l'œuvre, et Je dois payer samedi une somme que Je n'ai point, ni ne puis faire d'ici la. M. D'Ormesson, plein de bonne volonté, veut pourtant avoir votre attache pour venir a mon cours, et dans le moment ou j'ai le plus grand besoin d'aller vous demander cette justice comme une grace spéciale, je suis cloué a mon grabat. portant place which he accepted; the innumerable details of the work confused him, he lost his head, committed blunder after blunder, and, after a few months, was superseded by M. de Calonne, leaving a greater deficit than had ever been known before. About this time, harassed by his creditors on one side, secretly employed by the minister on the other in assisting the Americans in their struggle for independence, his debts and his vast specu-echéances arrivées, m'ont oté le repos. Puis au dernier lations continually agitating his mind with visions of immense wealth or abject poverty, while his fleet with its convoy were able to help a French admiral to inflict a heavy blow on an English squadron, at the cost of many ships and much merchandise to the speculator himself,-Beaumarchais was yet never able to extort from the Vous ne voulez pas que Je périsse. Je demande une Government more than a tithe of what was due to légère partie d'un grand tout que vous me feriez payer, him. He received the smiles of the king, but not si des lenteurs forcées n'avaient pas retardé ma liquidation rigoureuse jusqu'a aujourdui. his coin, even after the great service mentioned Au nom de l'honneur, et de votre bienveillance, ecrivés, above. Not until he had been thirty-six years in his Monsieur le Comte, a M. D'Ormesson qu'il est sans grave did his family receive anything from the inconvénient de me donner l'echelle d'acomptes dont je wreck of his claims upon the American Govern- lui ai remis l'etat, c'est celui de mes paiemens forces. ment-claims that only needed the sincere sup-faire promptement l'examen et la liquidation de mes Et daignez lui ajouter qu'il est indispensable de faire port of his own to establish them, clear and in-demandes; car on ne peut finir une affaire qu'après contestable. M. E. Fournier, in his admirable edition of the works of Beaumarchais (1876), prints a letter, till then unpublished, which he justly calls very important. It is dated the 15 Mars, 1783, and is also addressed to the Comte de Vergennes. In that letter Beaumarchais says that he had seen M. de Fleury, who had promised to occupy himself with his "indispensable liquidation." "" The writer represented that it was already three months since his accounts had been laid before the king. "Je suis serré," he says, 66 dans un étau." His engagements would suffer no postponement. The seizure of his two vessels had cost him more than 800,000 fr., and the publicity of his losses had brought his creditors down upon him. Remittances from America had been suspended. The Aigle, on board of which he had 4,000 bales, was taken. Floods at Morlaix had spoiled 100,000 fr. worth of his goods in warehouses. On the eve of his payment, the day before, a broker, by fraudulent bankruptcy, had deprived him of 30,000 fr. "This is the hardest time of my life," he continues; "and you know, M. le Comte, that I have now had for three years more than 200,000 fr. locked up in the enormous mass of parchment title-deeds which M. de Maurepas ordered me to buy up secretly in every direction. I shall perish unless M. de Fleury quickly decides with you to throw to me the sum which I request on account, as one throws a rope to a drowning l'avoir commencée: et depuis 5 ans, celle-ci ne s'entams point. Comme je devais me rendre porteur de votre réponse, daignez la remettre a mon postillon. Je ne puis Je ferai comme hier; J'irai plutot a quatre pates chez aller a Versailles; mais cette après midi, après l'accès, M. D'Ormesson, que d'y manquer. tout mon etat est devenu violent. Je voulais vous porter un papier curieux, relatif a ce que j'ai eu l'honneur de vous dire lundi. Mais Je n'ose le confier, mesme a mon courrier. Je vous irai le montrer, Dès que je pourai faire quatre lieues. Je joins ici la copie que j'ai fait tirer de la lettre de Voltaire au Roi de Prusse et de la réponse du Monarque; en présentant lhommage de cette lecture du Manuscrit cative de la vérité des faits, en la mettant dans la page que je vous ai remis, au Roi; joignez cette pièce justifiou il traite de la guerre de 1743, que vous retrouvérez facilement. Si cette lecture amuse le Roi, et que Sa Majesté desire en secret quelques autres parties inconnues du grand portefeuille; Je me ferai un devoir et un plaisir de faire, et pour vous, et pour lui, des choix bien intéressans. Sauvez moi l'honneur je vous prie, en mandant a M. D'Ormesson de me donner un provisoire indispensable. Jamais le Service n'a attendu un moment quand mon activité a eté invoquée. Je vous demande un million de Pardons de ce bavardage Je suis avec le plus inviolable dévoûment, M. Le Cte de Vergennes. Surrounded and oppressed with the troubles, anxieties, and cares which dictated this request for the payment of a small part of what the State owed to him, this wonderful man contrived to * I have transcribed this letter verbatim et literatim, without presuming to correct the writer's orthography, punctuation, or accents. steal from his numberless occupations, when his THE EPIPHANY AGAPE OF THE CHURCH I have before now, on the question of the Benediction of the Paschal Candle (5th S. xi. 321) cited in the pages of "N. & Q" some features of local Italian ritual which possess an interest for the antiquary as well as for the liturgiologist. It appears to me that the Epiphany ceremonies formerly practised in the Church of Ōsimo, in the Emilia, fall distinctly within the above category; and I therefore offer them for what will practically be the Epiphany number of "N. & Q." as well as the first of the new year. Besides the purely liturgical peculiarities of the Church of Osimo, which, in strictness, seem rather to have been common to the group of dioceses on the Adriatic slope of the Apennines embraced within what used to be known as the Legations, there was a celebration of the festival which the reverend authority whom I follow, the Canonico Fanciulli, in his elaborate and interesting treatise Di Alcuni Riti della Cattedrale di Osimo (Roma, Stamperia Salomoni, s. a., but Imprimatur dated 1805) calls an "Agape." From Canon Fanciulli's statements it would appear to be in their Processionals that we should look for these survivals of old Italian church customs, which lasted in many dioceses for a considerable time after the Roman Missal and Breviary had authoritatively superseded all other formularies. Accordingly, we find that the usage of the Church of Osimo, in holding a solemn procession for the benediction of the holy water at the festival of the Epiphany, was one of the ritual practices which survived the general adoption of the Roman rite in Italy. This procession, in which the laity of the city were represented by a richlydressed patrician who headed it as cross-bearer, started from the cathedral after Compline on the eve of the Epiphany. It seems worth noting here that women were excluded from the cathedral at the formation of the procession. And it seems no less worthy of note that the procession, though ritually part of the festival, being held "nella vigilia dell' Epifania," would appear to have been treated in the diocese of Osimo as penitential; for the clergy, we are told, were vested in violet. It is possible, of course, if not probable, that here, too, we have a survival of an ancient custom, the reason for which may not now be easy to trace. The holy water, I should add, was carried home by the people after the benediction. After the procession and benediction came the "Agape," which took place in a room within the cathedral adjoining the sacristy. The banquet-a very light one, it must be confessed-consisted of various kinds of sweets, described by Canon Fanciulli as "varie confetture 8 zuccherini." Its ecclesiastical character is shown by the fact that the only persons admitted to participate were the clergy and what may be called representative laity; only, in this instance, as in others outside the limits of the Emilia, it was the laity of high degree who alone were considered to be representative. Canon Fanciulli considers the application to this banquet of the term "Agape" to be warranted by its analogy with the apostolic and sub-apostolic "Agape" on the following three grounds :-(1) Because, like its prototype, it set forth the brotherhood of Christians; (2) because it was celebrated at eventide; (3) because it formed part of the Sunday offices, in token of the joy which it expressed. Lastly, I would call the attention alike of the antiquary and liturgiologist to the circumstance noted by Canon Fanciulli, that the Epiphany Agape of the Church of Osimo bore tokens of an Eastern derivation, as, indeed, might well be the case with a diocese lying between Ravenna and Bari. It was celebrated, remarks the Canon, as St. Gregory tells us in his Sacramentary that it was the custom of the Greeks to celebrate the festival of the Epiphany, "omnibus ad fontes convenientibus cum lampadibus et thure ibi multis precibus aqua benedicatur." And, as has been shown above, at Osimo in the Emilia, as in the Greek Church, there was a great benediction of water at the feast of the Epiphany, and therewith the faithful were sprinkled, they and their houses and their fields. Thus were celebrated the solemnities of the Epiphany in the diocese of Osimo down to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It may be that the "Agape" of Osimo was the last survivor in the Latin Church of the Love Feast of the early Christian centuries. C. H. E. CARMICHAEL. New University Club, S.W. A FRAGMENT OF ENGLISH HISTORY. It is tolerably well known among antiquaries that that ancient body the Honourable Artillery Company of London possesses a very interesting literary relic called the "Vellum Book." This book is a chronological record of the "Gentlemen who have been admitted to the Artillery Garden," com-ing, by a large majority, in the House of Commons mencing in 1611 and running continuously for of a Bill to exclude the Duke of York from the about three-quarters of a century. The chief in- succession, and when James was vainly bidding terest lies in the opening pages of the book, which in all quarters for support and popularity. He are devoted to the autographs of the aforesaid had that very day gone into the city to dine with gentlemen, and which are especially rich in the the Honourable Artillery Company, had been hooted later Stuart period, exhibiting an array of the and met with cries of "No Popery " in the streets, signatures of almost all the most eminent characters and his presence at table had caused many persons of the reigns of Charles II. and James II. The of consequence to absent themselves from the first two autographs are those of Charles and James banquet, some of whom, rather maliciously, gave when respectively Prince of Wales and Duke of away their dinner tickets to a lot of riff-raff, whose York. Upon following pages are the autographs company certainly did not tend to mitigate the of the monarchs who succeeded them upon the general ill success of the day. Plymouth was throne, and of the issue of such monarchs (the among those present; he saw all that passed; he latest being that of H.R.H. Albert Edward, Prince was doubtless aware that Charles had ere this of Wales), each name having either a separate been influenced to avoid the presumptive heirship page, or a considerable portion of a page, gor- of James by declaring Monmouth his legitimate geously illuminated, to itself. After the royal heir (Buckingham was ready to forge evidence pages come those bearing the signatures of subjects of the mother's marriage to the king); he was in close order. It is important to note that so ex- Charles's next eldest son after Monmouth; it was clusive was the appropriation of the royal pages, quite possible that a lucky stroke, say an Act to that even Prince Rupert, first cousin of Charles II., legitimatize the Protestant bastards, might bring has signed among the multitude. him within the line of succession; and thus, with admirable presence of mind, he disdains the leaves upon which many other noble and distinguished persons that day admitted have signed their names, and asserts his royal station by placing his autograph upon that august page below that of the king, his father. The autographs of Charles and James appear to have been written on June 1, 1641; and very imposing they look within their gilded illuminated circle, where for thirty-eight years they remained unprofaned by the hand of lowlier mortals; for, although during that period Rupert, Monmouth, Grafton, Albemarle, Buckingham, Shaftesbury, Sunderland, Danby, and other great ones were "admitted to the garden," none dared to sign upon his sovereign's page. The charm was, however, broken at last. At some distance below the royalties, in rather tremulous characters, is the following autograph: "Plymouth," followed by the date, "21 October, 1679." How it came there is the object of this note to suggest. Charles Fitz-Charles was the illegitimate son of Charles II. by Catherine, daughter of Thomas Pegg, of Yeldersley, in the County of Derby, Esq. Born in 1658, he was raised to the peerage in 1675 by the titles of Baron Dartmouth, Viscount Totness, and Earl of Plymouth. His autograph (for his it is) in the position noted affords an illustration of the history of the period. The Dukes of Monmouth and Grafton, two other of Charles's illegitimate sons, had been content to sign their names in the body of the book, Monmouth signing in 1664-a time when Charles might be expected to have legitimate issue-and Grafton signing towards the end of 1677, when the recent marriage of the Princess Mary to William of Orange appeared to secure the ultimate devolution of the crown in a Protestant line. But the date of Plymouth's signature is October 21, 1679, a time when the country was vehemently anti-papistical, when Shaftesbury, in the zenith of his power and fresh from his Habeas Corpus Act victory, had triumphantly secured the second read Alas for human ambition! Ere the next year was out he was lying dead in Tangier. H. D. ELLIS. THE STAR OF THE MAGI.-It is well known that the idea was started by the famous (but fanciful) Kepler that the star which brought the magi to Jerusalem at the time of our Lord's birth was, in fact, a conjunction or near approach of the planets Jupiter and Saturn, which, in fact, did occur in the year of Rome 747, or B.c. 7, two years before the most probable date of the Nativity. Dr. Ideler, of Berlin, worked out this idea in considerable detail in his Handbuch der Mathematischen und Technischen Chronologie, published in 1825, and concluded from his calculations that the two planets at one time approached each other so closely that for a weak sight ("für ein schwaches Auge") they would present the appearance of a single star. Prof. Pritchard (now of Oxford) was induced by this expression to re-examine the question and go through the labour of performing the calculation again, the result of which is given in vol. xxv. of the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the substance of his paper is incorporated in an article (by himself) in Smith's well-known Dictionary of the Bible. It amounts to this, that the planets never approached nearer than a distance of about one degree, equal to very nearly twice the apparent diameter of the moon. Prof. Pritchard makes somewhat merry over the |