Various

“ A picture intended to be printed from is no more a negative than another, its positive character being merely obscured by longer exposure in the camera. When first removed from the developing solution, glass pictures are negative, because they are seen upon the iodide of silver, which is a light ground. ”

“ It would be very desirable to compile a descriptive catalogue of painted portraits, those especially preserved in the less accessible private collections in England. Such a manual, especially if illustrated with outline sketches or photographs, in order to render it available at a moderate cost, would be most useful, and supply, in some degree, the deficiency of any extensive public collection of national portraits, such as has been commenced in France, at the palace of Versailles. ”

“ I believe muriatic acid would have precisely the same effect, or Beaufoy's acetic acid, though it would be rather expensive. Starch would be invaluable both for positives or negatives, if it could be laid on perfectly even; but if pinned up to dry it all runs to one corner, and if laid flat it runs into ridges. Perhaps some artist may be able to favour us with the best mode of treating starch; its non-solubility in cold water makes it an invaluable agent in photography. ”

“ Immediately beyond the edge of the bath is a small fillet of wood running across the box parallel with the bath, and so placed that if the bottom of the dark frame to contain the glass plate is rested against it, and the top of the frame rested against the end of the laboratory, the frame will slope at about an angle of forty-five degrees. Let there be a button, or similar contrivance, on the underside of the lid of the box, that the lid of the dark frame may be fastened to it when open. ”

“ I think, however, that some white flexible substance may be found, upon which the collodion, albumen, &c., may be spread; but if they be intended for framing, of course they are better on glass. The general effect is that of a sepia drawing. The picture first taken and used as a negative, may be preserved as a positive by removing the white back, and treating it in the usual manner.
Permit me to observe, that much confusion arises from the manner in which the terms positive and negative are often used; a negative glass picture is frequently spoken of as a definite, distinct thing ”

“ This laboratory has three short legs, which screw, or fasten by any simple contrivance, to it, so that it may stand a sufficient height from the ground to allow the bath, which fits in like the one in Archer's camera, to hang beneath it, and also that when working you may do so with ease. It is lighted by either yellow glass or India rubber. There are sleeves of India rubber for your arms, and the holes in the sides of the box traverse nearly the whole of the sides, for the purpose of moving your hands freely from one end of the box to the other; there is also an opening for the head. ”

“ As these pictures are to form a contrast with a white ground, they should be as brown in tint as possible; nitric acid, or other whitening agents, being avoided in the developing solutions for both negative and positive. By this process the detail and contrasts can be kept far better than by the operation of printing: for it is exceedingly difficult to obtain a picture which will convey to the prepared surface an amount of light corresponding to the natural lights and shades, and the trouble of making collodion copies is far less than printing. ”

“ Oratories.—In a parish in the county of Essex there is a pretty little brick chapel, or "oratory," as it is called there, with a priest's house attached at the west end, of about the thirteenth century; the length of both chapel and house being thirty feet, and the width fifteen. There is also a field called "Priest's Close," which was probably the endowment.
Can any of your correspondents inform me if there are many such places of worship in England, and, if so, to mention some, and where any accounts of them may be found? ”

“ Ross prepares lenses for Portraiture having the greatest intensity yet produced, by procuring the coincidence of the chemical actinic and visual rays. The spherical aberration is also very carefully corrected, both in the central and oblique pencils."
"Mr. Ross has exhibited the best Camera in the Exhibition. It if furnished with a double achromatic object-lens, about three inches aperture. There is no stop, the field is flat, and the image very perfect up to the edge." ”

“ MARLOWE'S "LUST'S DOMINION."
The Rev. Mr. Dyce omits the play of Lust's Dominion, or the Lascivious Queen, from the excellent, and (in all other respects) complete edition of Marlowe's Works which he has lately published, considering it to have been "distinctly shown by Mr. Collier" that it could not have been the work of that poet. I must say, however, that the argument for its rejection does not appear to me by any means conclusive. It runs thus: in the first act is presented the death of a certain King Philip of Spain ”

“ Am I correct in identifying her with "Dorothy, daughter of the Earl of Lincoln," who married Sir John Welborne (see Harl. MSS. 888. 1092-1153.) ? The dates in the Welborne pedigree perfectly correspond with this assumption.
Another question relative to this family is of greater interest, and I should feel sincerely obliged by any answer to it. Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, married Eleanora, daughter of King John, and had by her five children. The fourth son is called Richard in Burke's Royal Families, vol. i. p. xxiii. ”

“ In answer to your correspondent Ache, I may add, that the opinion of recent botanists is contrary to Sir Thomas Browne's notion with reference to the propagation of the seed; for it is known that the seeds, in germinating, send their radicles into the plant to which they are attached; and grow afterwards as true parasites, selecting certain chemical ingredients in preference to others. The mistletoe has never been known to grow in Ireland; but its frequency in various parts of the world—in France, Italy, Greece, and parts of Asia—has been remarked by travellers. ”

“ Place the bath-frame and bottles in their places; rear the glass plate in the frame; shut the laboratory lid; place your hands in the sleeves and your head in the hood; fix the door of dark frame to the top; coat the plate; place it in the bath with collodion side from you (it will then be in convenient position when you draw it out of bath to place at once in the frame) ; fasten the frame door; open the box lid; remove to camera; after taking picture, return frame to its place in camera; bring the plate to developing stand; develop; pour solution of salt over ”

“ Is it not to be presumed that the above Sir John Welborne (living, as he must have done, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, and allying himself with the great family especially protected by Henry III., uncle of the De Montforts) was himself the son of Richard or Almaric de Montfort, and founder of that family of Wellesburne, said to have "flourished in England"? The De Montforts no doubt abandoned their patronymic in consequence of the attainder of Simon, earl of Leicester, and adopted that of Wellesburne from the manor of that name, co. ”

“ Horne's handbills, circulated with the first samples of collodion, headed "Archer's prepared collodion" in 1851, and had some of the earliest in the market. That Mr. Archer should fail in trying his own preparation goes for nothing at all, because, at the best of times, and with the most skilful, failures are often numerous and mortifying, in photography above all other arts ”

“ And I would suggest, in default of a better derivation, that the word may have been Latinised from the Anglo-Saxon bere fellan or sellan. The office would then be that of almoner, and the Berefellarii would be the "persons" who doled out victuals to the poor; literally, barley-givers. Such an original would make the term liable to the objection to which the archbishop alluded; and the office does not altogether disagree with what was stated as the object of its institution, viz.:
"Ad honorem ecclesiæ Beverlaci, et majorem decentiam ministrantium in eadem." ”

“ It was by analogy that the word was used of the young of bears, lions, and whales: and if Shakspeare in one place (Merchant of Venice, Act II. Sc. 1.) says "cubs of the she-bear," he elsewhere (Titus Andronicus, Act IV. Sc. 1.) has "bear-whelps." I further very much doubt if cub was used of boys in our poet's time. The earliest employment of it that I have seen is in Congreve, who uses "unlicked cubs," evidently alluding to young bears: and that is the sense in which cub is still used,—a sense that would not in any case apply to Viola. ”

“ The prophet is not, in these words, inveighing against ill-assorted alliances between young men and old women; but is alluding to a general bouleversement of society, when mésalliances of noble women to ignoble men will take place.
This sense of the word gives us, I think, some help towards tracing its derivation, and I have no doubt that its real parent is the Anglo-Saxon hlafæta,—a word to be found in one instance only, in a corner of Æthelbyrt's Domas: "Gif man ceorles hlafætan of-slæth vi scyllingum gebete." ”

“ We must get at the facts before we can reason on them.
C.
Alicia Lady Lisle (Vol. vii., p. 236.) .—The lady referred to was Alice, or Alicia, daughter and coheir of Sir White Beconsawe: she was beheaded at Winchester, 1685. The jury by whom she was tried had, it is stated, thrice acquitted her; but the judge, that disgrace to human nature, Jefferies, insisted upon a conviction. Her husband was John Lisle the regicide, a severe republican, and one of the Protector's lords. An account of the family will be found in Curious Memoirs of the Protectorate House of Cromwell, vol. i. p. ”

“ Apart from these particulars, the king is neither Philip I. nor Philip II., but a mere King Philip of Spain in general, quite superior to historical considerations. The positive evidence in support of Marlowe's authorship is tolerably strong, though not absolutely conclusive. The earliest extant edition of the play bears his name at full length on the title-page. It is true that the date of that edition is 1650, sixty-six years after his death: still the publisher must have had some reasonable ground for attributing the work to him ”

“ Layard's zeal, energy, and judgment, or too grateful to Mr. Murray for giving us at once the results which those qualities have enabled Mr. Layard to gain for us, in so cheap, complete, yet fully embellished a form.
The blockade of Mainz was not a bad day for the already world-renowned story of Reynard the Fox, since that led Göthe to dress the old fable up again in his musical hexameters, and so give it new popularity. From Göthe's version a very able and spirited English paraphrase is now in the course of publication. ”

“ Now this counter-correspondent must have been his grandfather: and it would surely have simplified the inquiry if he had stated at once the name of his grandfather, whose letters he is anxious to recover. Mr. Rigby was one of the busiest politicians of the busy times in which he lived. He did not, as K. K. supposes, reside altogether in England. He was chief secretary to the Duke of Bedford when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, from 1757 to 1761; in which period he obtained the lucrative sinecure of Master of the Rolls in Ireland, which he enjoyed for upwards of twenty years ”

“ Rodfos. Him the Blackmen slew in foreign lands. God help the soul of Rodfos: God destroy them that killed him."
Another stone figured by Gösannson has engraved on it the same revengeful aspiration.
We all remember the Shakspearian inscription, "Cursed be he that moves my bones;" but if Finn Magnussen's interpretation be correct, there is an epitaph in Runic characters at Greniadarstad church, in Iceland, which concludes thus:
"If you willingly remove this monument, may you sink into the ground." ”

“ But what would be of far greater use to N. B. in ascertaining who was the author of the Rowleian poems, is an essay in manuscript, recently furnished to J. M. G. by a gentleman now resident in Bristol, whose ancestors were acquainted with Chatterton's family, and who has in this document shown, not only great archæological research, but has thrown much new light upon various disputed points both relative to Chatterton's relations and friends, which go far to settle the opinion, that the venerable Rowley, and not the boy Chatterton, was the writer of the poems. ”

“ Among the many purposes to which the art of Lithography is most successfully applied, may be specified,—ARCHÆOLOGICAL DRAWINGS, Architecture, Landscapes, Marine Views, Portraits from Life or Copies, Illuminated MSS., Monumental Brasses, Decorations, Stained Glass Windows, Maps, Plans, Diagrams, and every variety of illustrations requisite for Scientific and Artistic Publications. ”

“ J. D. S.
[Campvere is another name given by the English to Veere, or Ter Veere, a fortified town of the province of Brabant, and the kingdom of the Netherlands. It was formerly the staple-town for the trade between Scotland and Holland; but its privileges, and much of its commerce, have been removed to Rotterdam.]
Bishops Inglis and Stanser of Nova Scotia.—In addition to the very interesting notice of the former given in Vol. vi., p. 151., I beg to ask where and when he was born? whether an Englishman or American? ”

“ Jebb (antè, p. 207.) , are explained in the Glossarium of Ducange. They are identical in meaning and derivation, though slightly differing in point of spelling, with "Marigmerii" and "Melinglerii" (cited by Mr. Jebb) , "Marellarii," "Meragalarii," and "Malingrerii," and are all to be found in the learned work to which reference is now made. Of the last of these words, Pirri himself (who is quoted by Mr. Jebb) gives the explanation, which is equally applicable to them all. He says (in Archiepisc. Messan., sub an. 1347) :
"Malingrerium, olim dictum qui hodie Sacrista est." ”