to convey or invoke a blessing, and not an exhort ation to bless. PETER CORONA. The Church History Society -As one who feels greatly interested in the scheme for the establishment of THE CHURCH HISTORY SOCIETY, given in your number for the 2nd November last, and which you properly describe as a proposal calculated to advance one of the most important branches of historical learning," will you permit me to inquire through the medium of "NOTES AND QUERIES," whether DR. MAITLAND'S scheme has met with so much encouragement as to justify the expectation, and I will add the hope, that it may be fully carried out? LAICUS.

Pope Ganganelli. — There was a Life of Pope Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) published in London in 1785. It was a distinct work from that by Caraccioli. Can any of your readers inform me of the author's name; or is there any one who has seen the book, or can tell where a copy may be found? CEPHAS.

Sir George Downing.-I should be glad to obtain any information respecting Sir George Downing, of East Halley, Cambridgeshire, and Gamlingay Park, or his family. He was ambassador from Cromwell and Charles II. to the States-General of Holland, secretary to the Treasury, and the statesman was caused the "Appropriation Act" to be passed, the 17th of Charles II. The family is of most ancient origin in Devonshire, and I have heard that a portrait of him is possessed by some person in that county. ALPHA. Solemnization of Matrimony.—In the service of the Church for this occasion, on the ring being placed upon the woman's finger, the man is prescribed to say: "With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow," &c. How is this last sentence to be reconciled with the law? or is the vow to be considered revocable? A. A.

"There is in some such a disposition to be talking, that an offence of the slightest kind, and such as would not raise any other resentment, yet raises, if I may so speak, the resentment of the tongue, puts it into a flame, into the most ungovernable motions. This outrage, when the person it respects is present, we distin guish in the lower rank of people by a peculiar term.”

Now I should be glad if any one could offer a conjecture as to the Bishop's meaning in this last sentence? I have shown it to several people, but no one has been able to think of this "peculiar

term."

R.

The Duke of Wharton's Poetical Works.-Ritson prepared an edition of this nobleman's poetical

Translations of.-Will any of your readers be Erasmus' Colloquies — Apuleius' Golden Ass, kind enough to enlighten a provincial ignoramus by answering the following Queries:

1. Which is the best and most complete English translation of Erasmus' Colloquies?

2. Is there an English translation of Apuleius' Golden Ass?

3. Is the French translation of the latter work considered a good one? G. P. I.

The Molten Sea.-In 1835, Captain J. B. Jervis, of the Bombay Engineers, published at Calcutta an essay, entitled Records of Ancient Science, in which he endeavours to reconcile the discrepancy between the 1 Kings, vii. 23. 26. and the 2 Chron. iv. 2. 5. by proving that a vessel of oblate spheroidal form-of 30 cubits in the periphery, and 10 cubits in the major axis-would (according to the acknowledged relation of the bath to the cubit) hold exactly 2,000 baths liquid measure, and 3,000 baths when filled and heaped up conically with wheat (as specified in Ezekiel, xlv.

11.).

I do not possess any means of criticising this explanation of the difficulty, and having searched in various modern commentaries for a notice of it without success, I venture to submit it in your columns to the attention of others. TYRO-ETYMOLOGICUS.

"Sedem Animæ," &c.-Will any of your correspondents inform me where the following quota

tion is taken from:

Old St. Pancras Church.-Old St. Pancras has always been a noted burial-place for Roman Catholics that reside in or near London; and it has been assigned as a reason for that being their mausoleum and cemetery, that prayers and mass are said daily in a church dedicated to the same saint, in the south of France, for the repose of the souls of the faithful whose bodies are deposited in the church of St. Pancras near London (England), where crosses and Requiescat in Pace, or the initial of those words, R.I.P., are found on the sepulchral monuments. It is said prayer and mass

ANTIQUITAS SÆCULI JUVENTUS MUNDI.

(Vol. ii., pp. 218. 350. 295.). The aphorism," Antiquitas sæculi juventus mundi," which occurs in the Treatise de Augm. Scient., vol. viii. p. 31., and in the Advancement of Learning, vol. viii. p. 46., ed. Montague, may be safely attributed to Lord Bacon himself, though it is printed in both passages in the form of quotation, between inverted commas.

In the Novum Organum, lib. i. aph. 83., the thought appears in this form:

"De antiquitate autem, opinio quam homines di ipsâ fovent, negligens omnino est, et vix verbo ipsi congrua. Mundi enim senium et grandævitas pro antiquitate vere habenda sunt; quæ temporibus nostris tribui debent, non juniori ætati mundi, qualis apud antiquos fuit. Illa enim ætas, respectu nostri, antiqua et major; respectu mundi ipsius, nova et minor fuit."

The pointed and aphoristic form of the thought is due to Bacon; the thought itself has, however, been traced by Dr. Whewell to Giordano Bruno.

"It is worthy of remark, that a thought which is often quoted from Francis Bacon, occurs in Bruno's Cena di Cenere, published in 1584; I mean the notion, that the later times are more aged than the earlier. In the course of the dialogue, the Pedant, who is one of the interlocutors, says, 'In antiquity is wisdom;' to which the philosophical character replies, ' If you knew what you were talking about, you would see that your principle leads to the opposite result of that which you wish to infer; I mean, that we are older and have lived longer than our predecessors.' He then proceeds to apply this, by tracing the course of astronomy through the earlier astronomers up to Copernicus."Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii. p. 361. The Advancement of Learning was published in 1605, twenty-one years after the Treatise of Bruno. Mr. Hallam (History of Europe, vol. iv. p. 92.) treats the thought as the original property of Bacon; and although the first trace of it is to be found in Bruno, there is no improbability in supposing that it occurred independently to Bacon about the same time. L.

Bacon's Advancement in Learning (Vol. ii., p. 396.). The writer in "NOTES AND QUERIES" speaks of the English text as being original, and the Latin a version of Lord Bacon's Instauratio Magna; is he not mistaken? In reality there were two originals of that work, as we learn from Mallet's account prefixed to the folio edition of Bacon's works in 4 vols. London, 1740, p. xvii. et seq. (vol. first). The first edition was in English, London, 1605, and is to be found in the Bodleian. The Latin, published in 1623, is said by Mallet to be the work of Bacon himself, with the assistance of some friends, after he had enlarged and corrected the original; it is from this that Wats' version is made, which is very exact and faithful to its original. The title-page is

"Indeed, to speak truly, Antiquitas seculi juventus mundi, certainly our times are the ancient times, when the world is now ancient, and not those which we count ancient, ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from our own times."

Now this agrees exactly with Bacon's original Latin in Mallet's edition, vol. i. p. 43., except that ordine retrogrado is not in Italics; but in Bacon's English text (Mallet's edition, vol. ii. p. 431.), the coincidence in all respects is complete:

"And to speak truly, Antiquitas sacculi, (sic) juventus mundi. These times are the ancient times when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrogrado, by a computation backward from ourselves."

Wats' version is the more exact of the two.

ALBEMARLE, TITLE OF. (Vol. ii., p. 442.).

T.

In reply to the question of J., I send you some particulars about Aumerle or Albemarle.

The first Earl of this place, which is the name of a small town or territory in Normandy, was Otho, descended from the Earls of Champagne, and nearly related to William the Conqueror, to whom he fled for protection, having killed a great person in that country, and obtained this earldom and the Isle of Holderness, in Yorkshire, for his maintenance. The title remained in the heirs of Otho till the death of William, eighth Earl of Albemarle, 44th Henry III., when it reverted to the Crown, with the lordship of Holderness, and in the 9th of Richard II. he granted them to Thomas of Woodstock, summoned to parliament as "Thomas, Duke of Albemarle, the king's loving uncle."

Without enumerating the different persons upon whom our kings subsequently conferred this title as often as it became extinct or vacant, it will be sufficient for our purpose to show, that at the Restoration the dukedom of Albemarle was given to General Monk, who, according to Banks (D. and E. Peerage, vol. iii. p. 37.), had a certain degree of hereditary pretension to the name

S

by which he was enabled, inasmuch as he wa descended from Margaret, eldest daughter and coheir of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick and Albemarle; but this is not satisfactorily made out in Banks' table. At all events, the dukedom became again extinct on the death of Christopher Monk, the second důke of Albemarle, in 1688, S.P.; but the name was once more revived in 1695-6, by William III., in favour of Arnold Joort Van Keppel, Lord of Voorst, who had attended the king in several campaigns, and was his Master of the Robes, and on the 10th of February in that year created "Earl of Albemarle in Normandy;" the title having been doubtless selected as one so frequently enjoyed by persons of the highest consideration, and not in any way resting upon an hereditary claim.

Audley End.

BRAYBROOKE.

Replies to Minor Queries.

Cromwell Poisoned (Vol. ii., p. 393.). — Your correspondent P. T. queries if there be any other statement than that which he adduces respecting Cromwell having been poisoned. I would refer him to the Athene Oxoniensis of Anthony à Wood, vol. ii., p. 303.,* in which it is stated that Dr. George Bate's friends gave him credit for having given a baneful dose to the Protector, to ingratiate himself with Charles II. Amidst all the mutations of those changeful times, and whether Charles I., Cromwell, or Charles II. were in the ascendant, Dr. George Bate always contrived to be the chief state physician. In Whitelock's Memorials of the English Affairs (1732), p. 494., it appears that the Parliament, in 1651, ordered Dr. Bate to go into Scotland to attend the General (Cromwell), and to take care of his health; he being his usual physician in London, and well esteemed by him. He wrote a work styled Elenchus Motuum nuperorum in Anglia. This was severely scrutinised in another, entitled Elenchus Elenchi; sive Animadversiones in Georgii Batei, Cromwelli Paricida, aliquando Protomedici, Elenchi Motuum nuperorum in Anglia. Autore Robt. Pugh; Parisiis, 1664. Dr. Bate, who died 19th April, 1669, was buried at Kingston upon Thames. SN.

Nov. 9. 1850.

“Never did Cardinal bring Good to England" (Vol. ii., pp. 424. 450.).— BERUCHINO is right in his suggestion that Dr. Lingard may accidentally have omitted a reference to the place from whence he really derived this saying; for Hall tells us in his Chronicle (ed. 1802, p. 758.), that

"Charles, Duke of Suffolke, seeing the delay, gave a great clappe on the table with his hande and said,

*I allude to the old edition, 2 vols. Lond. 1691-2, folio; not having any other at hand.

Nonjurors' Oratories in London (Vol. ii., p.354.).— "Nothing, my lord, appears so dreadful to me as the account I have of the barefaced impudence of your Jacobite congregations in London. The marching of the King's forces to and fro through the most factious parts of the kingdom, must (in time) put an end to our little country squabbles; but your fifty churches of nonjurors could never be thus daring, were they not sure of the protection of some high ally."-Letter from Bishop Nicholson to Archbishop Wake, dated Rose, Sept. 20. 1716. in Ellis's Letters, Series iii.

W. DN.

"Filthy Gingran" (Vol. ii., p. 325.).—I have found the following clue to the solution of my Query on this point:

"Gingroen (gin-croen) s. f., the toad-flax, a kind of stinking mushroom."-Owen's Welsh Dictionary.

There is, however, some mistake (a high authority informs me) in the explanation given in the dictionary. Toad-flax is certainly not a "mushroom," neither does it "stink." Is the Welsh word applied to both equivocally as distinct ob

jects? In Withering's Arrangement of British Plants, 7th edit., vol. iii., p. 734., 1830, the Welsh name of Antirrhinum Sinaria, or common yellow toad-flax, is stated to be Gingroen fechan.

I must still invite further explanation. A. T. Michael Scott (Vol. ii., p. 120.). — A correspond

ent wishes to know what works of Michael Scott's

have ever been printed. In John Chapman's Catalogue for June, 1850, I see advertised "Michael Scott's Physionomia, Venet. 1532.

Chyromantia del Tricasso da Ceresari,

2 vols. in 1, 1532."

66

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Noluit Jethro legem posteris figere: sed, quoad quietam stationem adeptus esset populus, remedium præsentibus incommodis, atque (ut vulgo loquitur) modum promissionis ostendit."

An old French translation renders it :

"Il n'a point donc voulu mettre loy pour la posterité: mais seulement remedier aux incommoditez presentes par maniére de provision (comme on dit)," &c.

The general import of the passage is, that Jethro's counsel to Moses, as to the appointment of rulers over the people, was not intended to apply to Canaan, but only to their sojourn in the wilderness.

I do not see how the "formula professionis monastica" helps us; unless, indeed, "modus promissionis" were a kind of temporary and conditional vow, which does not appear in Ducange.

C. W. B. End of Easter (Vol. ii., p. 9.). Should not the end of Easter be considered its octave - Low Sunday?

West, some thirty-five years or more ago, an old tombstone belonging to the Dillon family, on which was traced the genealogy of the Roscommon branch from one of the sons of the first earl (if I remember right, the third or fourth), down to a Thomas, who had, I have heard my father say, a son called Garrett, who had issue two sons, Patrick

and Thomas. Patrick was always, in that part of the country, considered the heir to this title. Patrick and Thomas had issue, (living or dead I been living, they would no doubt have come forknow not), but should imagine dead; as, had they ward when the late earl claimed the title, as he claimed it as being descended from the youngest son of the first earl, whereas Patrick and Thomas were certainly the descendants of one of the elder of either Patrick or Thomas come forward, it sons of the first earl; and therefore, had the sons would no doubt have been decided in their favour. On this account, it was several years before the late earl's claim was fully confirmed, as it was thought that some of the descendants of the elder branches might come forward. This would have attracted my attention earlier had I not been abroad. AN HIBERNIAN.

First Earl of Roscommon (Vol. ii., p. 325.). There was, in the burying-ground of Kilkenny