Minor Notes.

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"Milton Blind."—A little poem bearing this title, and commencing,—

"Though I am old and blind,"

is said to have been included in an edition of the poet's works recently published at Oxford. It was written by Miss Lloyd, a lady of this city, a short time ago.

Uneda.

Philadelphia.

Hydropathy.—For a long time, I believe in common with many others, I have imagined that the water cure is of late origin, and that we are indebted for it to Germany, to which we look for all novel quackeries (good and bad) in medicine and theology. This belief was put to flight a short time ago by a pamphlet which I discovered among others rare and curious. It is entitled Curiosities of Common Water, or the Advantages thereof in preventing and curing many Distempers. The price of the pamphlet was one shilling, and the author rejoices in the name of John Smith. After his name follows a motto, the doctrine of which it is the duty of all licensed to kill according to law strenuously to protest against both by argument and practice:

"That's the best physick which doth cure our ills

Without the charge of pothecaries pills."

E. W. J.

Crawley.

Cassie.Mr. M. A. Lower (a correspondent of "N. & Q."), in his Essays on English Surnames (see vol. ii. p. 63.), quotes from a brochure on Scottish family names. He seems, from a footnote, to be in difficulty about the word cassie. May I suggest to him that it is a corruption of "causeway?"

The "causeway" is, in Scotch towns, an usual name for a particular street; and of a man's surname, his place of residence is a most common source of derivation.

W. T. M.

The Duke of Wellington.—Lord de Grey, in his Characteristics of the Duke of Wellington, pp. 171, 172., gives the following extract from the despatches published by Colonel Gurwood, and refers to vol. viii. p. 292.

"It would undoubtedly be better if language of this description were never used, and if officers placed as you were could correct errors and neglect in language, which should not hurt the feelings of the person addressed, and without vehemence."

Compare this passage with the following advice which Don Quixote gives to Sancho Panza before he sets off to take possession of his government:

"Al che has de castigar con obras, no trates mal con palabras, pues le basta al desdichado la pena del suplicio sin la anadidura de las malas rezones."—Part II. ch. xlii.

See translation of Don Quixote by Jarvis, vol. iv. b. III. ch. x. p. 76.[1]

The very depreciatory terms in which the Emperor Napoleon used to speak of the Duke of Wellington as a general is well known. The following extract from Forsyth's Napoleon at St. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe, appears to me worthy of being brought under the notice of the readers of "N. & Q.:"

"After the governor had left the house (upon the death of Napoleon he had gone to the house of the deceased with Major Gorrequer to make an inventory of and seal up his papers), Count Montholon called back Major Gorrequer to ask him a question, and he mentioned that he had been searching for a paper dictated to him by Napoleon a long time previously, and which he was sorry he could not find, as it was a eulogium on the Duke of Wellington, in which Napoleon had spoken in the highest terms of praise of the military conduct of the Duke."—See vol. iii. p. 299.

J. W. Farrer.

Footnote 1:(return)

Jarvis translates the passage in Don Quixote,—"Him you are to punish with deeds, do no evil; intreat with words, for the pain of the punishment is enough for the wretch to bear, without the addition of ill-language."

Romford Jury.—The following entry appears on the court register of the Romford Petty Sessions (in Havering Liberty) for the year 1730, relating to the trial of two men charged with an assault on Andrew Palmer. As a curious illustration of the manner in which justice was administered in country parts in "the good old times," I think it may be interesting to the readers of "N. & Q."

"The jury could not for several hours agree on their verdict, seven being inclinable to find the defendants guilty, and the others not guilty. It was therefore proposed by the foreman to put twelve shillings in a hat, and hustle most heads or tails, whether guilty or not guilty. The defendants, therefore, were acquitted, the chance happening in favour of not guilty."

E. J. Sage.

Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough), Chief Justice.—J.M.'s quotation of the song in the Supplement to the Court of Sessions Garland (Vol. ix., p. 221.), reminds me of the lines on Mr. Law's being made Chief Justice:

"What signifies now, quirk, quibble, or flaw,

Since Law is made Justice, seek justice from Law."

W. Collyns.

Drewsteignton.

Chamisso.—Chamisso, in his poem of "The Three Sisters," who, crushed with misery, contended that each had the hardest lot, has this fine passage by the last speaker:

"In one brief sentence all my bitter cause

Of sorrow dwells—thou arbiter! oh, pause

Ere yet thy final judgment thou assign,

And learn my better right—too clearly proved.

Four words comprise it—I was never loved:

The palm of grief thou wilt allow is mine."

"He knew humanity—there can be no grief like that grief. Death had bereaved one sister of her lover—the second mourned over her fallen idol's shame—the third exultingly says,—

'Have they not lived and loved?'"

The above is written in a beautiful Italian female hand on the fly-leaf-of the Basia, 1775.

E. D.

Dates of Maps.—It is very much to be wished that map-makers would always affix to their maps the date of their execution; the want of this in the maps of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge has often been an annoyance to me, for it frequently happens that one or both of two maps including the same district are without date, and when they differ in some of the minor details, it requires some time and trouble to find, from other sources, which is the most modern, and therefore likely to be the most accurate.

J. S. Warden.

Walton.—The following cotemporary notice of the decease and character of honest Isaac's son, is from a MS. Diary of the Rev. John Lewis, Rector of Chalfield and Curate of Tilbury:

"1719, Dec. 29. Mr. Canon Walton of Polshott died at Salisbury; he was one of the members of the clergy club that meets at Melksham, and a very pious, sober, learned, inoffensive, charitable, good man."

E. D.

Whittington's Stone on Highgate Hill.—It is well that there is a "N. & Q." to record the removal and disappearance of noted objects and relics of antiquity, as one after another disappears before the destroying hand of Time, and more ruthless and relentless spirit of enterprise. I have to ask you on the present occasion to record the removal of Whittington's stone on Highgate Hill. I discovered it as I strolled up the hill a few days since. I was informed that it was removed about a fortnight since, and a public-house is now being built where it stood.

Tee Bee.

Turkey and France.—The following fact, taken from the foreign correspondence of The Times, may suitably seek perpetuity in a corner of "N. & Q."

"I wish to mention a curious fact connected with the port of Toulon, and with the long existing relations between France and Turkey, and which I have not seen mentioned, although it is recorded in the municipal archives of this town. In the year 1543, the sultan, Selim II., at the request of the King of France, sent a large army and fleet to his assistance, under the command of the celebrated Turkish admiral Barbarossa, who, according to the record, was the grandson of a French renegade. This army and fleet occupied the town and port of Toulon at the express wish of Francis I., from the end of September 1543, to the end of March 1544. And on this day, the last of March 1854, a French army and fleet has sailed from the same port of Toulon to succour the descendant of the Sultan Selim in his distress. What a remarkable example of the rise and fall of empires!"

It will not invalidate the force of the foregoing extract to state, that Selim II. did not become sultan until 1566, and that it must have been his father Suleyman (whom he succeeded) who came to the rescue of France in 1543. The same Turkish fleet was afterwards nearly annihilated by the Venetians in 1571, at the battle of Lepanto.

Geo. Dymond.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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