Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/60

 NOTES AND QUERIES. - [io s. xn, JULY 17, im

1844. Miller (James). The Lamp of Lothian ; or, the history of Haddington, in connection with the public affairs of East Lothian and of Scotland, from the earliest records to the present period. Haddington : printed and published by James Allan, and sold by Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh. 1844 V 8vo, 528 pp. Not in B.M. " Every type of it ['The Lamp of Lothian'] was set up and every correction prepara- tory to printing off the sheets was per- formed by the author's own hand." ' Bio- graphical Sketch ' prefixed to edition of 1900, p. xix. A note on ' Printing in East Lothian' is given, p. 525. The book is regarded as a standard history of Haddington.

1859. Miller (James). The history of Dunbar, from the earliest records to the present time. Dunbar : printed and published by James Downie. MDCCCLTX. 8vo. With frontispiece, vignette half-title, and illustration p. 211. 320 pp.

1900. Miller (James). The Lamp of Lothian ; or the history of Haddington .... from the earliest records to 1844. New edition, with biographical sketch of the author. Haddington : printed and published by William Sinclair. 1900. small 4to, xxxii+236 pp.

The ' Biographical Sketch ' is by Mr. Thomas Cowan, stationer, Haddington. There is .also a prefatory note by Dr. Wallace- James. The list may conclude with a book in the Miller Collection, but not by either father or son :

1819. Mercer (Andrew).* Dunfermline Abbey ; a poem. With historical notes and illustrations Dunfermline : printed and sold by J. Miller

1819. 12mo, xii-f-184 pp.

'The printer and publisher, John Miller (died March, 1852, aged 74), was half-brother to George Miller of Dunbar : see the MS. ' Notes on the Miller Family,' and ' Bifylio- graphy of Works relating to Dunfermline and W. of Fife,' by Erskine Beveridge, 1901, p. xvii.

Additions to this bibliography, and in- formation with regard to the Miller family, Are invited. T. F. U.

THOMAS PAINE'S REMAINS. THOMAS PAINE, who, students now admit, was joint author of the American Declaration .of Independence, died on 8 June, 1809, near New Rochelle in the State of New York. He expressed in his will the earnest desire to be interred in the Quaker burial-ground ,t New York, but although he believed in the Deity and in a future life, his general theological opinions did not accord with those of the Friends, and they refused sepulture. His body was accordingly in- terred in a field on his own farm, near New Rochelle. Shortly after the funeral, a fanatical mob invaded the farm, armed with

pickaxes and hammers, and smashed his gravestone. A friend of Paine afterwards rode to the spot, and took away the largest fragment of the marble stone that he could find.

About September, 1819, William Cobbett disinterred the remains, in the vain hope that they would receive in Paine's native land a public funeral befitting his talents. The exhumation is recorded in Cobbetfs Register, vol. xxxv. p. 382, in a note written by Cobbett from Long Island. On 21 Nov., 1819, Cobbett landed in Liverpool with the coffin containing the remains, and then presented to his friend and co-Reformer, Edward Rushton, a fragment of the grave- stone. It is almost certain that this is the fragment taken away by the friend previously mentioned. I had a photograph taken of the stone in June, and a tape measure taken therewith shows that the fragment is about 1 ft. 7 in. in width, about 1 1 in. in its greatest height, and some 3 in. thick. The inscription is as follows :

THOM

Author of common

Died June 8th 18

Aged 74 Years.

Edward Rushton, the prominent Liverpool Radical, was a friend of Brougham, Canning, Campbell the poet, and O'Connell, and very intimate with Thackeray, whom he induced to write ' Vanity Fair.' Rushton became Stipendiary Magistrate of Liverpool in 1831, and died in 1851. The stone then passed into the custody of his son Wm. Lowes Rushton, the Shaksperian scholar, who died in March last in his eighty-third year. His aged widow, who resides in Liverpool, had to ransack the house in order to find the relic, a fact which made me regret that it is not preserved in some public building. The authenticity of the stone is vouched for by Wm. Lowes Rushton in his book ' Letters of a Templar ' (Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1903).

To return to the history of the actual remains, I find the following in a rare pamphlet entitled ' A Brief History of the Remains of the late Thomas Paine, down to 1846' (London, J. P. Watson, 3, Queen's Head Passage, 1847). Cobbett occupied Normandy Farm, near Farnham, Surrey, and died there on 18 June, 1835, having piously preserved the remains in a large trunk, awaiting the funeral pageant which never came. Within a month of Cobbett's death, his son was sued for debts with which the elder Cobbett had nothing to do, and all the son's household effects (including