Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/165

 i. FEB. is, ION.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

133

been found in situ, which prove that such distances were sometimes computed from the gates of the city ; and by a law of Tiberius, ' Rei Agrarise Auctores Legesque Varise ' (Amst., 1674, 4to), pp. 346-8, the Roman surveyors were also authorized to use sepul- chres for purposes of boundary and for points and intersections of geometric lines (see Trans. Lond. and Midd. Arch. Ass., vol. iv. part i. p. 61).

Pennant considered that the stone in Pan- nier Alley, which lately had a narrow escape from the clutches of an American, had the appearance in his time of being an original Roman sepulchral stone, an opinion which is of much interest when it is associated with the fact that there is or was, as it is said to have been buried in situ at the time the Marble Arch was re-erected from Buckingham Palace at Tyburnia a similar one at Cum- berland Gate, Hyde Park, where soldiers were shot for desertion in time of war. Now this stone and that in Pannier Alley are stated to be exactly equidistant from the Roman sarcophagus of late years unearthed in Westminster Abbey precincts, the three thus forming a triangle, and I believe there was a similar significance attached to the dis- covery of the Roman sarcophagus at Lower Clapton (see pamphlet by Mr. B. Clarke). The tablet recording the site of Hicks Hall states that that Sessions House stood 1 mile 1 furlong and 13 yards from the Standard in Cornhill. "Mile-huts," to supersede the mile- stone, were suggested by the compilers of Rees's ' Cyclopaedia,' v. ' Milestone.'

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. 161, Hammersmith Road.

The inference that few English highways were provided with milestones in 1743 finds some support in Macaulay's graphic descrip- tion of the deplorable state of the roads half a century or so earlier. Milestones, in fact, imply thoroughfares kept in serviceable con- dition ; to a succession of quagmires they are but ironical accessories ; and a succession of quagmires is what our immediate forefathers too frequently dignified by the name of a road. Yet for fifteen centuries there had existed monuments showing how the greatest road-builders of antiquity appreciated the measured way Hadrian's Wall, studded with mile-castles, for example. That the Roman public roads were accurately divided by mile- stones is carefully recorded by the voluminous Gibbon ; and, indeed, the inscriptions on these miliaria have proved of great value to the classical topographer. As to who first erected them, Duruy, referring to Plutarch and figuring two restorations, says : " L'usage

de ces bornes doit etre beaucoup plus ancien que Gracchus, qui passe pour Favoir etabli" (' Hist, des Remains,' i. 151 ; iv. 16). But it is a far cry from the milestones on the Croydon road to their predecessors on the stately Appian Way. J. DORMER.

Milestones in England appear to have come into modern use with the Turnpike Acts in the early part of the eighteenth century. In an Act relating to the Great Post Road from London to Chester (1744) the trustees are empowered to measure the roads and erect "milestones." So says a correspondent at 9 th S. v. 499 ; while another stated that the first milestones erected in England were set up between Cambridge and London in 1729.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

If MR. W. MOY THOMAS looks up 'The Beauties of England and Wales,' he will find several allusions to Roman milestones. Two occur in the volume dealing with Northum- berland, published in 1813. Writing on Little Chesters, or the Bowers, the author says on p. 122, vol. xii. part i. :

" At Coldley-gate, where the Via Vincialis crosses Bardon Burn, is a mile pillar about seven feet high, placed at the foot of a large tumulus ; and a mile further up the Causeway, another broken in two."

On p. 141 he states, under the heading of Redesdale and Risingham : " This is the modern name of a Roman station.

Opposite this station lie many large stones

Forty years ago, a mile pillar was standing, a mile south of the station, and at the present time there is one used as a gate-post, opposite the door of the inn at Woodbridge.

CHAS. F. FORSHAW, LL.D., F.R.Hist.S. Bradford.

ENVELOPES (9 th S. xii. 245, 397, 434, 490 ; 10 th S. i. 57). With the data supplied by SIR HERBERT MAXWELL, MR. PEET, MR. MERRITT, and others, it is hardly necessary to produce further evidence to prove that envelopes, as we know them, were in use for postal pur- poses long previous to 1840. With regard to " franking," I never mentioned its use by

Erivate persons. My statement was that I ad seen envelopes so endorsed for the purpose of free postage since 1840. Lord Fortescue's were so transmitted through the Post Office when he was Lord Lieutenant of the county. The Duke of Cambridge's private envelope, franked " Cambridge," was received by me in 1890, free of postage. I am well aware of the modern habit of placing signatures upon the face of an envelope, but this of course does not constitute a "free delivery." My state-