Various

“ At the same time, however, that I assert the inefficacy of any experiments with the pendulum as tending to show the earth's rotation, I admit that, provided a pendulum could be made to preserve its plane of oscillation for twenty-four hours, it would oscillate independently of the rotation of the earth, and actually describe a circle round a fixed table in that interval. ”

“ The theory in question is:
"That the variation of the pendulum's plane is due to the excess of velocity with which one extremity of the line of oscillation may be affected more than the other."
I ventured to pronounce this to be untenable, and begged A. E. B. to "reduce it to paper." Upon this he remarked:
"H. C. K. is surely not so unphilosophical as to imagine that a theory, to be true, must be palpable to the senses. If the element of increase exist at all, however imperceptible in a single oscillation, repetition of effect must eventually make it observable. ”

“ Such a consideration will never interfere with my own judgment, founded on a thorough knowledge of the meaning of the Hebrew word. I have long since learned that opinions are not necessarily true, because they are old ones, nor doctrines undeniably infallible, because we may have believed in them from our cradles. I am positive, however, that had the LXX, the authors of the Vulgate, Rashi, and the translators of the authorised version, known the locality of Wady Mokatteb, they would have hesitated before they put so unnatural a construction on the word. ”

“ However, there is another equally fatal objection to this theory, founded on experiment; to make which objection good, I will not merely adduce the result of my own, but that of certain experiments carried out at Paris, which place the matter beyond a doubt. In the Pantheon, at Paris, there is a pendulum of the length of 230 feet, by means of which experiments can be made under the most favourable conditions possible as regards suspension, exclusion of currents of air, &c. ”

“ And, indeed, of many authorities who have recorded their opinion on the effect of this canon of the Quini-sextile council, W. DN. is the only one who expresses a doubt as to its direct reference to the cross and the crucifix. Both the historians of the church, and those who have treated of the history of the Arts in the Middle Ages, are concurrent in their testimony, that it was not till immediately after the promulgation of the canons of the Council in Trullo that the use of the crucifix became common in the early churches. ”

“ Since every country has its Holywood, and de Sacrobosco does not distinguish Holywood from Halifax, John of Halifax has been claimed both by Ireland and Scotland, and, if I remember right, by some foreign countries. The manuscripts of his works, as well as the earlier printed editions, call him Anglus or Anglicus; and he lived in a time at which the natives of the three countries were as distinct as Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Italians. Bale, quoting Leland, calls him Halifax; as does Tanner: Pits gives his birth to Halifax. ”

“ There is what is called an "election" every year, from the senior boys on the foundation at Westminster, to scholarships at Christchurch, Oxford, and Trinity, Cambridge. As the scholarships at Oxford are understood to be worth three or four times as much as those at Cambridge, all are anxious to obtain an Oxford scholarship. ”

“ Tithes in Wales have not differed in any material respect from those payable in England: an excessive subdivision of ownership being the only circumstance which is remarkable in regard to them. As each article of titheable produce is capable of becoming a separate property, and this property may again become divided amongst an indefinite number of owners, the complexity occasioned by such minute interests may be imagined. ”

“ No surer means of obtaining their suffrages could have been adopted by the French President than by gaining the favour of the parish priests, whose influence is necessarily paramount on such occasions over their flocks.
In the accounts which have appeared in our journals of the Pantheon and its varied fate, several errors and deficiencies having struck me, I beg leave briefly to correct and supply both, with your permission, by a general history of the beautiful edifice. ”

“ We are expressly told by inspired authority, that the seventy elders—not sixty-eight—were set round about the tabernacle; and there and then did Jehovah take of the spirit that was upon Moses, "and gave it unto the seventy elders,"—not to sixty-eight only. Another proof that Eldad and Medad cannot be considered as two of the seventy elders, but as persons belonging to the mass of the laity, is derivable from Moses' answer to Joshua, "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets" (ver. 29.) ”

“ THE CROSS AND THE CRUCIFIX.
(Vol. v., p. 39.)
Your space precludes controversy: but the communication in Number 115. from W. DN. requires an explanation from me; which I give the more readily as it may perhaps serve to throw further light on a curious inquiry. A correspondent in a former Number (Vol. iv., p. 422.) questioned the correctness of an assertion by the Hon. MR. CURZON, that "the crucifix was not known before the fourth or fifth century, though the cross was always the emblem of the Christian faith." I ventured to sustain MR. CURZON'S view (Vol. iv., p. 485.) ”

“ So that enlightenment and freedom, superstition and ignorance, have not yet wound up their accounts. See Gregory's Letters to a Candid Enquirer, p. 277., where enlightenment and freedom get a slap on the face. He maintains that even grave-lights (probably) humaniform apparitions; and that all other ghost-stories, not connected with the place of interment, equally belong to bi-od or animal magnetism.
A. N.
Marriage Tithe in Wales (Vol. v., p. 29.) .
—It is well known to your readers that the whole of the tithes in England and Wales have recently been commuted for rent-charges ”

“ In order that the readers of "N. & Q." may have an opportunity of judging for themselves of the question between DR. TODD and myself, as to the identity of Kibroth Hattavah and Wady Mokatteb, it will be necessary, in the first place, that a more comprehensive view should be taken of the camp of Israel than DR. TODD'S criticism seems to imply. A population of six hundred thousand, besides women and children, must have occupied a larger extent of ground than a single valley ”

“ Pits implies that it appears from the epitaph that he died in 1256: Mæstlinus expressly affirms that it can be collected from the epitaph, in the Ad Lectorem of his Epitome Astronomiæ. All the authorities believe him to be English; and Leland thought he traced him as a student at Oxford. But had the manuscripts called him anything but English, the other evidence would not have weighed them down; for there are plenty of Holywoods, and there was, notoriously, a press of foreign students to Oxford in the thirteenth century. ”

“ In order, therefore, that what has come to pass should be exhibited before the sight of all by the skill of the artist in colours, we direct that the representation of Christ the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world, shall henceforth be elevated in his human character ”

“ That he should have been on the very brink, as it were, of the true reading, and yet fail to discover it, is only to be accounted for by his subjection to that besetting sin of the day which denied to Shakspeare all philological knowledge except what he might derive through his own language.
In order to give Malone strict justice, I shall transcribe his suggestion, together with the comment by which Steevens appears to have stifled it in the birth:—
"The disagreeable recurrence of the word stars in the second line induces me to believe that As stars, in that which precedes, is a corruption. ”

“ I may add that there is a variation of the above theory, which has found many advocates, viz. that the pendulum will make the complete revolution in a period varying from twenty-four hours at the poles, to infinity at the equator ”

“ W. DN. has quoted this canon, not from the original Greek of the council, which I copy above, but from the Latin version given in Labbe, and which is much less close and literal than that of Carranza; and the words "erigi et depingi," which it employs, are a very incorrect rendering of the Greek ἀναστηλοῦσθαι, a term peculiarly appropriate to the elevation of a crucifix. ”

“ In the body of the work, in the counterfeit the letter-press occupies more space than the genuine. Taken at a venture (and a right-hand page is preferred, because the number of the page, and the catchword, come in one perpendicular line) , I examined p. 163. The height in the genuine is 5-1/5 inches; in the counterfeit 5-4/5; the increase, 3/5. The width of the page appears to be in proportion. In the preliminary matter of the genuine copy the De Correctione ends with the line, "eos corrigere, atque purgare." The counterfeit varies. ”

“ No one it has been observed, was more justly entitled to have the achievement of his genius invoked, as our Wren's has been, and indicated to the inquirer, as the fit repository of his mortal remains. ”

“ It seems well worthy the attention of modern archæologists to ascertain what foundation in fact exists for the statements advanced by ancient writers as to the possibility of preparing a lamp that would burn for centuries in the tomb. ”

“ Reverse, a monument, or pedestal, on the top of which is the naked body of Grandval, and a man about to dissect it; on each side is a fire-pot, to burn the entrails, and pikes, on which the head and four quarters are stuck; between two pikes, on the right, is a gibbet. An inscription in Latin is on the pedestal to this effect:
"Bartholomew de Grandval, a murderer, bribed by the money of Louis, convicted of parricide, and suffered the most severe punishment for having attempted to assassinate William III., King of Great Britain ”

“ Richard Gibbings, who has published a new edition of it, with an elaborate and very finished preface, in 1837. [4] I have likewise seen it at Mr. Pickering's, a copy which I presume came from the dispersed library of the late Rev. H. F. Lyte. That in the Bodleian I did not feel it necessary to examine. I do, however, possess, though not the original, a very correct, as appears, fac-simile of that volume, whether it was intended as a counterfeit or not. The title, without any addition, agrees exactly with that of the original, as given by your Oxford correspondent. ”

“ One of the Commissioners of Devonport complaining last week that a charge of one shilling and sixpence should have been made upon the parish authorities for the grave and interment of a still-born child, said, "When I was a young man it was thought lucky to have a still-born child put into any open grave, as it was considered to be a sure passport to heaven for the next person buried there." Query, Is this prejudice still common?
R. R.
GOLDSMITH'S PAMPHLET ON THE COCK LANE GHOST.
Mr. Prior (Life of Goldsmith, vol. i. p. 387.) ”

“ In this Society the whole profits are divisible among the policy-holders, who are at the same time exempt from personal liability. It claims superiority, however, over other mutual offices in the following particulars.
1. Premiums at early and middle ages about a fourth lower. See specimens below. (*)
2. A more accurate adjustment of the rates of premium to the several ages. ”

“ In the notices of the early churches of Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland, frequent mention is made of these baptisteries or holy wells, which we do not remember to have seen fully discussed in any work, and of which some account would be interesting alike to the divine, the topographer, and the antiquary. The learned Leland, in his Itinerary, iii. ”

“ Tegg's authority for attributing the Schola Cordis to Quarles in his edition of 1845.
The following extract from a very interesting and characteristic note, dated November 24, 1845, that I received from Mr. Tegg in reply to my query of a similar description, will afford the information:—
"Quarles' works were originally printed for me by Mr. Whittingham of Chiswick, who, with my approbation, [93] engaged the Rev. Mr. Singer to edit the works. It was from this edition I printed my books," [i.e. the edition of 1845.] ”

“ DR. RIMBAULT, in his Note "On the First Paper-Mill in England," after alluding to the errors of various writers on the subject, adds, "In Bartholomeus de Proprietatibus Rerum, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495, mention is made of a paper-mill near Stevenage, in the county of Hertford, belonging to John Tate the younger, which was undoubtedly the 'mylne' visited by Henry VII." Now this statement itself needs correction. ”

“ JOHN MURRAY, Albemarle Street.
GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE.
Now Ready, 3rd Edition, with Maps, 8vo. 16s. each.
HISTORY of GREECE. From the earliest period down to the Accession of Philip of Macedon, B.C. 403-359. By GEORGE GROTE, Esq. Vols. I. to X.
*** Vols. IX. and X. are Just Ready.
JOHN MURRAY, Albemarle Street.
MURRAY'S ILLUSTRATED PRAYER BOOK.
Now Ready, Illustrated with Ornamental Borders, Initial Letters, and Engravings from the Old Masters. One Volume, Crown 8vo, 21s. in antique cloth. ”

“ It also happens that the rings are often of unequal width on opposite sides of the trunk.... While, if the tree be so hollow as to have no portion of its centre remaining ... will expose the calculation to ... error. In reference, therefore, to the Cowthorpe Oak, we abandon all scientific pretension.'"
The foregoing is extracted from an account of the Cowthorpe Oak by C. Empson, Esq., 1842: Ackerman, Strand.
COKELY.
"Mirabilis Liber" (Vol. iv., p. 474.) .
—I have a copy of this book, from which a "prophecy" is quoted in "N. & Q." p. ”

“ An effigy on a tomb in Gloucester cathedral, vulgarly called that of Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, who died in 1367.
3. The effigy of William Wilcotes, in Northleigh church, co. Oxon, who died in 1411.
4. and 5. Sir Thomas Peryent and his wife, in Digswell church, co. Herts. He was esquire-at-arms to Richard II., Henry IV. and V., and Master of the Horse to Joan of Navarre, 1415.
6. Sir William Calthorpe, in Burnham church, co. Norfolk, 1420.
7. Edwardus de la Hale, in Oakwood chapel, near Shene, in co. Surrey, died in 1421. ”