It shows that we were forestalled in this excellent custom by our neighbours in the Principality, from whom, possibly, we may have derived the idea. The naming of the appeal a "Bidding" is a curious title, and it would be interesting to know the origin of the word, excepting it is to be taken in the Scriptural sense as a bid to the marriage :

Carmarthenshire, Oct. 29th, 1838.

As we intend to enter the Matrimonial State on Friday, the 23rd day of November next, we are encouraged by our Friends to make a BIDDING on the occasion the same day at our own House, situate in Orchard Street, in the town of Llandovery; when and where the favour of your good and agreeable company is humbly solicited, and whatever donation you may be pleased to bestow on us then will be thankfully received, warmly acknowledged, and most cheerfully repaid whenever called for on a similar occasion

By your most obedient and humble Servants,

THEOPHILUS THEOPHILUS.
JOAN LEWIS.

The Young man desires that all gifts of the above nature due to him be returned on the said day, and will be thankful, together with his Brothers (Benjamin and William) for all additional favours conferred.

Also the Young Woman and her mother (Anne Lewis) desire that all Gifts of the like nature due to them be returned on the said day, and will be thankful, together with her Brothers (Rees and William) for all additional Favours granted.

Ealing.

Printed by James Morris, Llandovery. JOSEPH BEARD.

Queries.

We must request correspondents desiring information on family matters of only private interest, to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that the answers may be addressed to them direct.

CHEP OF A PLOUGH.-Plot ('Nat. Hist. Oxf.,' 1677, p. 247) has :

"Having also near the chep of the plough, a small fin to cut the roots of the grass, for in this land the broad fin jumps out of the ground."

I am aware of the explanations in Halliwell and Cassell's Encyclopaedic Dictionary.' Can any one give us independent information as to chep and fin, and state where else the word occurs, or where it is now used? J. A. H. MURRAY.

Oxford.

This is the morn of victory,

When the high conqueror came to die.
The earth was dark, its guilty gaze
Saw not o'er heaven the splendours blaze
That told the shepherds he was born.
It heard not on that breaking morn
The angel harp, the glorious hymn
From burning lips of cherubim.
That morn the Roman Cæsar sat
Unconscious that a potentate
Was born, to whom his laurelled brow
Must stoop-the mighty Man of Woe-
The Pontiff at the altar stood
Unconscious that a nobler blood
Than ever flowed that morn was given
Pure from the summit-throne of Heaven.

The kingly victim came not robed
In gold with trooping spears englobed,
Blazed (gleamed) on his brow no royal gem,
He came the Babe of Bethlehem.
His was all power-the tempest sky
Might have come down his canopy;
With rushing of his chariot wheels,
Told by his thunder's herald peals,
With flashing of his midnight lightning

The earth through all her chambers brightening,
'Till mankind, wakened out of slumber,
Bebeld in numbers without number,

Rank behind rank down Heaven's high steep
The seraph legions gorgeous sweep,
'Till in the centre blazed the throne
Of Him who sat, the first great One.
There was no pomp, for on that morn
A man of sacrifice was born.
He came to be a stranger here,
E'en in his tribe a wanderer.
He came to weep, to pray, to die,
And win for man the victory.

C. H. R.

Don Francisco Enriques were intended for him (the king). No doubt some one may be able to give me information on this last point as well. I have no books of reference at hand, or would not enoroach on your space. JERMYN.

'OWEN'S WEEKLY CHRONICLE.'-I have in my possession one sheet of Owen's Weekly Chronicle, c., and Westminster Journal for July 14-21, 1764, "London, printed for Messrs. Owen & Harrison; and sold by J. Cooke, Bookseller, at Shakespeare's Head in Paternoster Row, where advertisements and letters to the authors are taken in." Could you or any of your correspondents give me any information about this newspaper? When did its publication commence, and when cease? H. T.

FAROE ISLES.-A work under the following title is quoted in Mr. Stally brass's translation of Hehn's 'Wanderings of Plants and Animals,' p. 409 "C. J. Graba, Journal of a Voyage to Faroe in 1828. Hamburg, 1830." Does this work exist in English, or is it in German or Danish? It does not occur in any language in the catalogue of the London Library.

ANON.

POUNDS.-Day by day (Oh, for the shades of Mr. Pickwick!) the common pounds of the kingdom, once so well known in every lordship, township, and village, are, through the greed of the landholders and the unwakefulness of the tenants of the manor, being lessened down and swept away. Having marked that not so long ago a seeker was by your readers afforded a knowledge of the places at which stocks were still kept to frown a warning on wrongdoers, I deemed that perhaps the like help might be given me in telling the tale of pounds. Meanwhile it would be as well for such as look upon these with an evil eye to bear in mind there is little or no question that the overthrow of the pound is a nuisance at common law, indictable as "against the peace of the Queen.

"

P. A. VIDLER.

7, Somerfield Terrace, Maidstone. AUTHOR OF POEM WANTED.-Can any one tell me who is the author of a piece of poetry entitled 'Papa's Letter,' and whether it can be obtained in book form? M. E. L.

SIR MICHAEL LIVESEY.-What is known of the ultimate fate of this regicide? He was M.P. for Queenborough in the Long Parliament from 1645 till its dissolution by Cromwell. He is frequently said to have died before the Restoration, but that clearly is an error, inasmuch as he is included in the Act of Oblivion among the thirty living regicides who were absolutely excepted from the benefit of the Act. He certainly was living at the return of the Rump in 1659, and was one of the members of that assembly who withdrew upon

W. D. PINK.

TENNYSON QUERIES. What "Lady of the Lake" is it who figures in the 'Idylls of the King'; and where may one find some account of her? I shall be glad if any of your readers can inform me to whom reference is made in the following couplet from 'Gareth and Lynette':—

My fortunes all as fair as hers who lay

Among the ashes and wedded the king's son.

Also, what particulars are known concerning the inscription referred to in the same poem as left by the vexillary "crag-carven o'er the streaming Gelt"? Again, "Arthur's harp" is mentioned in the same poem in such a manner as to imply that it is the name of a constellation. Some reader may be able to inform me whether that has been at any time the popular name of one of the constellations.

F. J.

[The allusion in the two verses might be to Cinderella.]

BLAYNEY FAMILY.-According to Lodge's 'Peerage of Ireland,' Henry Blayney, second son of Sir Arthur Blayney, married Mary, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Seddon, of co. Lanc., but Burke's 'Landed Gentry' calls her daughter of Laurence Sidney, D.D., Rector of Worthen, Salop. Which is correct? His son, John Blayney, married Ann, daughter of Anthony Weaver, Esq., M.D., and was father of Arthur Blayney, Esq., of Gregynnog, who ob.s.p. 1795. Arthur Blayney, third son of Sir Arthur, married first Margaret Foster, or Forbes, and had Edward, Richard, and Henry, besides daughters. Was Edward father of the Rev. Richard Blayney, of Whitchurch, Salop; and what were the names of Arthur's six children by his second wife, Jane Smothergill ? H. H. BALL.

PERSIAN PEACOCK.-A friend has brought over a brass peacock from the East. I shall be obliged for any information as to the original use of the birds, and their probable age. I am told they are now scarce. The ornament (if so it be) is in four pieces-the stand, body, tail, and head. The tail is in the shape of a fan, one solid piece of brass. The wings, not moulded feather-wise, are on hinges. The complete height of stand and bird is about two feet. The whole is painted. The principal subject seems to be a shah or sovereign sitting, with attendant on each side standing, and what I take to be a peach tree in blossom on the right of the principal

figure, and a mountain behind him. This subject is repeated several times. The rest is covered with figures and flowers on a cream ground.

H. A. W.

ANNE HATHAWAY.-Where can the verses the refrain of which is "Anne hath a way" be found? I was under the impression that they were to be met with in Ireland's 'Confessions,' but such is not the case. F.

NAMELESS ROYAL INFANTS.-In Strickland's 'Life of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland,' she says that in 1508 she (Queen Margaret) gave birth to a daughter, who died as soon as christened. Noble, in his 'House of Stuart,' says Queen Margaret had a daughter, who was born July 15, 1508, and died an infant. Neither of these writers gives the infant princess a name. If (as Miss Strickland infers) she was baptized she probably had one. Noble mentions another daughter of James IV. and Queen Margaret, born prematurely November, 1512, who died soon after her birth. If she lived one day only she was probably baptized, but she likewise is nameless. Can any of your readers give a name to either one or other of these royal

sisters?

Florence.

C. H.

OLD GOLD.-I have in vain ransacked every available dictionary and cyclopædia for a precise definition and the French equivalent of this very common term. Neither under the head of "Old" nor of "Gold" is there any mention of the term. Can any of your readers set me right? R. R. L.

PARLIAMENTARY PAIRING.-When did this process first become known by the name that it now bears? In the recently published 'O'Connell Correspondence,' vol. i. p. 188, the member for Clare, writing in May, 1829, says, "When a gentleman disposed to vote for me in the usual way wrote to the Treasury to ask to tie with a Government member, he got an official letter stating to him that it was not to be opposed by the Ministry." Was to "tie" earlier than, or alternative to, the expression to "pair"? GEO. L. APPERSON. Wimbledon.

NOTE IN ROGERS'S 'ITALY.'
(7th S. vi. 267, 352.)

The note for which MR. MALLET inquires is, I apprehend, the long English one about the Last Supper picture, asterisked a little confusingly on to the words "then on that masterpiece," not the short Italian one from Vasari, which is really a note on the prior line, "His last great work." I believe no edition (unless perhaps some pirated one, to which one would not go for information) has ever been published without the quotation from Vasari, correctly rendered with the exception of "ogni uno" for ognuno.

the

The first edition of the 'Italy' was published by Longman in 1822, but it was only given as first part," reaching no further than Florence. The first edition of "the second part" was brought out by Murray in 1828, uniform with it (in what is technically 12mo., but looking to ordinary mortals like small 8vo.), so that they could be bound up together. The Italian quotation is certainly in this one, but not the Last Supper note.

In this comparatively insignificant form the 'Italy' appears to have attracted little attention. Rogers, who was at this time a well-received poet (for it was the latest of his important works), kept his incognito so securely that it is said even his publishers were in the dark about it, and that, to put his friends off the scent, he somewhat altered the direction of the route in the poem from that he was known by them to have taken on his journey to Italy in 1814-5. He wanted to have a genuine opinion on his poem, unbiassed by regard for his reputation.

But the critics were not to be caught so. The Edinburgh and the Quarterly took no notice of it, and the edition hung on hand. The author, however, "knew that it was good," and was not to be crushed, as a less successful writer would have been, by the seeming indifference. In 1830, accordingly, he brought out an edition with three publishers at once (Cadell, of the Strand; Jennings, of Cheapside; and Moxon, of Bond Street), adorned with the exquisite Turner illustrations, to which some by Stothard* were added, with a carefulness that

*The illustration to the passage under consideration is Stothard's, and the straight gaunt figure of the dying

must have occupied a great part of the two intervening years, The division into two parts was done away with, the "additional notes" were added at the end (the old ones being preserved as foot-notes), and the whole poem greatly amplified. This is not the place to consider whether these amplifications were always improvements. Some, doubtless, were a gain, but the simple grandeur of the original first line

I am in Rome!......

remains in all the rugged majesty of its original diction.

Rogers gracefully acknowledges the value he attached to the co-operation of the artists in a special paragraph at the end of his brief preface to the 1830 edition, and it seems rather unworthy that in 1838, when that value had been perhaps proved, the said paragraph is omitted!

Among the "additional notes" introduced into the édition de luxe of 1838 is the one quoted 7th S. vi. 352, by the REV. W. E. BUCKLEY. It will be seen by any one interested in the lines that the first note is meant originally as a mere explanation of what Raffael's "last great work" was. The succeeding lines of it are but a translation of the Vasari quotation (which itself was but a reproduction of the sentiment of an earlier writer), and the "additional note" is a kind of parallel passage which Rogers probably found in his commonplace book or diary (for he seems to have kept both) of a

painter and the meaningless namby-pamby girl-like figures round him cannot be considered a happy composition; on the other hand, the accuracy of the reproduction of The Transfiguration' is wonderful for its size, and very successful in its execution, with the exception of the figure of Elias, which is a caricature, and in the upper part more like the figure of an undraped

female than that of an old prophet.

*There is a curious oversight in the 1828 edition. In the first line of The Bag of Gold,' "I dine very often with the good old Cardinal **, and I should add, with his cats," the two asterisks are so small and crowded that they set you looking for a note that might be expected to supply his name. In the 1838 edition it is made clear enough that they stand to express "Cardinal blank.

But Sta. Giustina was a Benedictine, not a Dominican convent; and the Cena in Casa del Fariseo is not a 'Last Supper'; and Paris Bordone is hardly to be considered a painter of impressive pictures; neither can the one in the Museo, by some attributed to Salviati and by some to Romanino, be considered such.

One would almost be tempted to think that the poet had been mixing up Padua with Milan in his recollection, but that in his note on this note he makes special allusion to the masterpiece there, from which it must be inferred that he had a distinct idea in his mind that he had seen a striking Cenacolo at Padua also; and then we know that he spent great pains on the finish and accuracy of his work. There is a special note in his commonplace book that he worked at polishing it up to 1834, reckoning that he was fifteen years over it. But as he says in his preface that much of it as it was originally printed was written on the spot, he might have said twenty years instead of fifteen.

We are bound to conclude, therefore, that there was a Cenacolo of some merit in some refectory in Padua, and it would seem quite worth while that Rogers's MS. journal of his Italian journeys should be searched for further particulars of it. His property and works of art occupied three weeks in selling off by auction. Were his MSS. included? If so, who bought the journal? If not, what remaining member of the family can throw any light on it?

In the subsequent editions, I may remark, in conclusion, this "note on a note" was embodied in the note itself, forming a second paragraph of it, and it was finally spoilt by the addition of the foolish "Prior's portrait story." R. H. BUSK. P.S.-Since the above was written I have looked

into Burckhardt, Kugler, Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Mrs. Jameson, &c., and do not find any such painting known to them. Nor can I find in any account of Padua, old or new, mention of any Dominican | monastery there.

The quotation at the last reference concluding, "and the dishes and drinking-cups are, no doubt, such as were used by the fathers in that day," reminded me of a striking description I had recently read of the drinking and other vessels most curious used by the Benedictine monks of Durham monastery. The passage-which may not seem out of harmony with the query-occurs in vol. ii. of Hutchinson's' History of Durham,' in the notes to "Cathedral Church," as follows:

"Within the Frater-house door, on the left hand at

entering, is a strong almery in the wall, wherein the great mazer, called the Grace-cup, stood, which every day served the monks after grace, to drink out of round the table; the cup was finely edged about with silver and double gilt. In the same place were kept many large and great mazers of the same sort; among which was one called Judas's cup, edged about with silver, and double gilt, having a base to stand upon of silver double gilt. This was never in use but on Maunday Thursday, at night, when the Prior and Convent met to keep their Maunday. In the same almery was a goodly cup, called St. Bede's bowl; the outside was of black mazer [maple word], the inside of silver double gilt, and the edge finely wrought with silver and double gilt; in the midst was the picture of the holy St. Bede, sitting in a writing posture; the base thereof of silver, double gilt, with four joints of silver coming down, all double gilt from the edge to the base, to be taken in pieces......And there is another large almery within the Frater-house......of wainscot, having several almeries within, fine wrought, and varnished over with red varnish, in which lay several table-cloths, salts, mazers, a bason and ewer of latten, with other things pertaining to the Frater-house, and the loft where the monks dined and supped. Every monk had his mazer to himself to drink in...... All the mazera were finely edged with double gilt silver, and another basin and ewer of latten. On this ewer was pourtrayed a man on horseback, as riding a hunting, which served the sub-prior to wash his hands in at the aforesaid table, he sitting there as chief."

Perhaps this account of monastic vessels of the refectory is unique. It was derived from ancient MSS. relating to Durham Abbey, by Hutchinson, about a century ago. It would be interesting to learn if any of these great mazers ("Judas's cup" or "St. Bede's bowl" for instance) were preserved. If they escaped the spoliator till the Puritan Dean Whittingham's sway at Durham (1563-79), we know that he, to quote an old writer, could not abide anything that appertained to a godly religiousness, or monastical life." R. E. N.

66

Bishopwearmouth.

O'CONNELL'S 'DIARY OF A TOUR IN THE NORTH' (7th S. v. 267, 391; vi. 173).—Though many persons deem it unlikely that O'Connell wrote the Diary' assigned to him by Huish, reasons in support of an

opposite conclusion might be given in addition to those which I previously submitted. Huish introduces the 'Diary' as most positively O'Connell's, adding,

"We have good reason to believe that the journey of Mr. O'Connell was mainly undertaken to make himself more intimately acquainted with the state of his native country as regarded the political, moral, and religious condition of the people, which could not be accurately ascertained by the mere parole evidence of others." O'Connell lived eleven years after this 'Diary' appeared, and never denied its authenticity.

O'Connell studied at Douay and St. Omers. The diarist, noticing an old priest, says, "The instant I saw the owner I knew he had been a long time in France," and then follows a description of his "white smallclothes, vest, and head powdered still whiter" (p. 319). "Our conversation was mostly in French" (p. 320). In a letter from Douay, dated Sept. 14, 1792, O'Connell speaks of the "powdering" then usual.

The diarist, though evidently brought up in France at the period of the Revolution, is averse to shedding blood (p. 338). "No political boon is worth the purchase of one drop of blood" was a favourite axiom with O'Connell.

The diarist refers in touching words to the execution of Louis XVI. (p. 321). O'Connell left France on the day that Louis suffered, and viewed with emotion a handkerchief steeped in his blood which John Sheares exultantly displayed. See 'Life and Speeches of O'Connell,' by his son, vol. i. pp. 9, 10. The diarist is averse to separation (p. 347). So was O'Connell.

The diarist is opposed to ascendency (p. 352); and nothing was more constantly denounced by O'Connell than ascendency.

The diarist, like O'Connell, yearns again and again for Catholic emancipation in the most extensive acceptation of the word. See p. 357, et seq.

"

"Let office in its full proportion be Irish and them averse to an English or Protestant king Catholic," says the diarist, "and you will not find (Diary,' p. 352). The same sentiment is constantly expressed in O'Connell's letters, just published by Mr. Murray.

The diarist records that he was intimate with

the parson of Strabane, diocese of Derry (p. 335). It would be easy to trace the name of this clergyman, and whether he was intimate with O'Connell

in 1814.

It has been assumed that the writer cannot have been a Roman Catholic. At pp. 321, 352-3, we have enthusiastic praise of the Catholic religion.

O'Connell's grandson, Daniel O'Connell, D. L., Darrinane, thinks it incredible that a public man travelling for days in the country should not excite attention. But the diarist travelled in a simple and unostentatious manner, and incog., as I gather from p. 316. At pp. 344 and 368 we learn that it