MR. URBAN,-Observing in your July No. an article headed "The Family of Roche and Viscounty of Fermoy, signed "Corcagiensis," I beg to state, for the information of the writer, or whomever it may concern, that I have always been considered as the nearest representative, being lineally descended from James Roche of Abyshowry, in the county of Cork (my great-grandfather), who derived his claim from the third son of Maurice Lord Roche, Viscount Fermoy, the last acknowledged possessor (the posterity of the two elder brothers being extinct).-Yours, &c.

JAS. CESAR DURNFORD,

of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister, 10, Upper Phillimore Place, Kensington, 26 Aug. 1853.

MR. URBAN, -The word plunder (German plündern) is generally supposed to have been introduced into England from the Low Countries or Germany at the time of the Great Rebellion. Mr. Richardson in his Dictionary cites a pamphlet of Prynne in proof of this: "I think the Parliament never yet approved the plundering (or, in plain English, robbing) of any man," &c. I do not find the following illustration from Fuller in any of the Dictionaries" This invited the French to invade this country, where they did much mischief, plundering (the thing was known in England before the name) the people thereof, and carrying away captive the Prior of Lewes." Fuller's Worthies, Sussex, vol. ii. p. 392. F. M. N.

Lychnoscopes.-A Correspondent would be glad to be informed whether anything certain is known respecting these windows, otherwise called, he believes, hagioscopes, or squints? It is a vexata questio; but it seems scarcely possible that all real information upon the point--considering that, at the time of the Reformation, they were very general in our churches-should be lost: they are very singular. they still in existence in Roman Catholic churches either in this country or abroad? If so, what is their use? The Inquirer has one in his church, closed up as usual.

Are

INDAGATOR has drawn our attention to a discrepancy in his copy of the Gentleman's Magazine for the year 1779. In the Index to the Essays, Occurrences, &c. is this entry, "Fraine, Mr. his melancholy end, 375;" but, on turning to

that page, no such matter occurs. In the General Index from 1731 to 1786 there is no reference to the volume for 1779; but this to the volume for 1785,

Fraine, Mr. curious particulars of his case, lv. 799, 877." On turning to that volume, we read of a second unhappy suicide in the same family of Fraine; and it is accompanied by a reference to a former occurrence of the like character which had occurred in 1779, as described in the Magazine first mentioned. We have taken the trouble to examine into this matter. When, in 1779, it was intended to suppress the narrative of the first suicide, two leaves of the Magazine, pp. 373-376, were cancelled, and the space occupied by the account of "Mr. King Samuel Fraine" was filled up by various paragraphs of News. But in many copies the original leaves must have escaped. We find them in our own, and in that in the King's Library in the British Museum; but the copy in the Reading-room of the British Museum has the cancelled leaves in their place.

A Correspondent says, in Wase's translation of Priolo's "History of France under Mazarine," 1671, several passages are bracketed, for instance the explanation of the tax on hereditary offices, called "The Statute of Paulet,' at p. 91. [Paulet under Henry IV. was the inventor of that device. Before Francis I. publick charges were not bought and sold, but were the rewards of Vertue.]" Are these passages interpolations of the translator's, or notes transferred to the text?

A monument erected in the burial ground of Chelsea Old Church, by the Fellows of the Linnean and Horticultural Societies, in 1815, to the memory of Philip Miller, for many years curator of the Chelsea Botanic Garden, having fallen much into decay, has been restored by means of a similar subscription, aided chiefly by Dr. Iliff. An engraving of it was published in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1815.

We beg to decline the metrical version of the legend of the Worm of Lambton.

Erratum.-P. 207. The late Rev. William Procter, Vicar of Bishop's Burton, was a different person from the Fellow of Catharine ball and Perp. Curate of Doddington, who is still living.

WE were prevented by an accident from noticing the publication of the first and second volumes of this important work at the time of their publication-in 1852, and have now therefore to treat of the whole book as it stands before us complete in four volumes. And, first, let us say that it is well edited. The third volume contains, as we shall have to notice hereafter, a special treatise written by the editor upon one particular subject; but, besides that, the rest of the book is full of convincing evidences of Mr. Smith's editorial care and skill. The notes would have been more satisfactory if the editor had not indulged, in the course of them, in political illustration and inference often of a very decided party character; still they are replete with information, and in many cases it is just the kind of information required for the proper illustration of the documents.

The Grenvilles are a family of considerable antiquity. They are said to have been seated at Wotton in Bucks, from the reign of Henry I., and the lineal descent of the present family may be distinctly traced, we believe, from the reign of John. In the long intervening period there have been amongst them many useful and energetic men. There was a Richard Grenevile of Wotton who went to the wars in France under Henry V.; and an Edward who was sergeant of the

buckhounds to Henry VIII.; another Edward who had a command under Sir Francis Drake; and a Richard who adhered, like most of the Buckinghamshire men, to the Long Parlia ment in the time of Charles I. An aisle in the church of Wotton contains the dust of many generations and monuments to not a few. At the commencement of the eighteenth century the head of this honourable family was one Richard Grenville of Wotton, who married, in the year 1710, Miss Hesther Temple. This lady was a daughter of Sir Richard Temple of Stowe, and a favourite sister of Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham, Sir Richard's eldest son. Under the patent by which the peerage was granted to Lord Cobham, his sister Hesther was the declared inheretrix of his title in default of his own issue, and by his will she became also the inheretrix of his very large estates.

The union of the small estates of the Grenvilles with the larger property of the Temples greatly enhanced the importance of the former family, and on its occurrence, Mrs. Grenville, then Viscountess Cobham, was created Countess Temple, with a grant of the dignity of Earl Temple to her heirs male.

The Countess Temple had many children. Only three of them are necessary to be mentioned by us at present: her first son Richard, who succeeded as Earl Temple on the death

of his mother in 1752; her second son George, who filled the most eminent public offices in the early part of the reign of George III.; and her only daughter Hesther, who was the wife of the first and mother of the second William Pitt. The correspondence of Earl Temple, and that of his brother George Grenville, two separate sets of papers which were combined at Stowe, form together the subject of the book before us, and are of great historical value, principally on account of the high positions in the State to which the Grenvilles attained by reason of their family connection with "the great commoner" William Pitt. George Grenville might easily have made some figure as a statesman without the assistance of that alliance; but Earl Temple, it is probable, would never have been known except as a wealthy peer, if the marriage of his sister had not thrown him into the involuntary position of a satellite to his illustrious brother-in-law. The two Grenville brothers were extremely different men in character as well as in position. Earl Temple possessed very moderate talent, but great ambition; little high principle, but inordinate pride. He was proud of his wealth and of his rank, and often, it may be feared, offensive in the use of them. Ever thirsting after increase of dignity, and jealous of everything which came between the wind and his nobility. His political importance really resulted, as we have remarked, from his connection with Pitt; but such was not his own idea. He supposed himself to be at any event the political equal of his great brother-in-law; and, assigning to nobility and wealth the place which should have been yielded to political genius and eloquence, he would fain have made himself the head of a family band of statesmen (the cousinhood as it was termed amongst his contemporaries), comprising the Grenvilles and their connections. These were the men most competent, according to Lord Temple's theory, to govern both King and People. This was his leading idea; and if any of the family allies, as he would have had them to be, claimed independent action, or set up any pretensions which interfered with Lord Temple's supremacy, his offence was, in Lord Temple's estimation, in the nature of treason against

From thence

the head of his house. forth, the delinquent was cast off. And he was not merely abandoned, but, unless Lord Temple was much belied amongst his contemporaries, was pursued with a paltry malice which rendered his lordship even amongst his nearest political associates more suspected and feared than loved.

Mr. George Grenville was undoubtedly a man of much higher talent than his brother. Launched early in life upon the sea of politics, through the influence of his relative Lord Cobham, he soon became deeply acquainted with all the forms of public business, and was looked up to as eminently qualified for the office of Speaker. Formal, stately, regular, methodical, cold and unimpassioned, he kept his ground by dint of the reputation which such men acquire for being persons of solid parts, and not unfrequently in the course of his political life justified the confidence of his friends by speeches and measures of unquestionable excellence. Conscious of his own merit and spurred on by some ambition and a narrow fortune, it was not difficult to detach him from his brother's patriarchal schemes, and in 1761, when Mr. Pitt and Lord Temple retired, on the question of declaring war against Spain, George Grenville did not hesitate to advance himself by adhering to Lord Bute. The offence thus given to Lord Temple was dire. For several years the brothers continued at variance, and Lord Temple exerted himself in conjunction with Mr. Pitt in the most direct opposition to his brother's government and measures. In 1765 the brothers were reconciled, but the old scheme for family aggrandizement could never be again completely revived, for Pitt was not fully reconciled to George Grenville until 1768. In 1776 Lord Temple's fancied rights as head of the Grenvilles were again doomed to meet with disappointment. He was sent for by the King to take part in an administration to be formed by Pitt. Pitt and he disagreed as to the division of the patronage, or rather Pitt insisted upon retaining in his own hands the customary rights, in that respect, of a prime minister. Lord Temple thought that Pitt ought to share them with him, as his brother, and the head, in worldly station, of their political firm,