Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 5.djvu/327

 io' s. v. APE.L 7, 1906.J NOTES AND QUERIES.

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been cut, in the best sense of that nautical phrase ; and the last detachment of an army of occupation has left its shores.

RICHARD EDGCUMBE. Edgbarrow, Crowthorne.

MLLE. G. M. MERLETTE. I feared to make my note on Elizabeth Barrett Browning (ante, pp. 204, 224) too long, or should have written more about Mile. Germaine Marie Merlette ; but it should be recorded that this gifted lady did not live long after writing what The At/ienceum pronounced would "long continue to be by far the fullest and most adequate biography" of Mrs. Browning. Mile. Merlette died on the 5th of October, 1905 ; and a short obituary notice in The Athenaeum of the 21st of the same month states that her " enthusiasm for her subject took her to England and Italy in search of material." This was supplied to her by Mr. Barrett Browning and other friends. The biography gained for her* the distinction of the Doctorate of the University of Paris, to which it was presented as a thesis.

JOHN C. FRANCIS.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

" PLACE." We should like to get as much information as possible about the use of this word in the topographical nomenclature of cities, towns, and villages, as in Bury Place, Ely Place, Langham Place, Portland Place. When did names of this type begin in Great Britain ? What early examples can be given ? When, for example, was Ely Place named? In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we find place frequently used in reference to foreign cities, rendering Fr. place, Sp. jjla.ici, It. piazza. Ger. platz^ Du. plaats, &c. ; and always, of course, in its proper sense of the square, public place, market place, or place d'armes of the town, or of a regularly built piazza, as in Rome or Florence. I presume that it was in this sense of "open square" or the like that the name was first introduced (perhaps as a grandiose or stylish name) into London and English towns, where it rapidly degenerated into a denomination for any area, group, or row of houses, not a street. In the nineteenth century many streets had "places" in them, the name having been given by builders to a small row of houses, standing by themselves on a suburban road, or perhaps merely distinguished from others

by being the property of one landlord or builder. And before the road in question had become a street, and could be numbered continuously, it was necessary to have some means of distinguishing and localizing the numerous groups or rows of houses which it contained ; for which purpose '* place," as the common English word for a point or part of space, a locus, lieu, or orf, was very handy. It would be extremly difficult now to say what a "place" is in English town nomen- clature, unless, perhaps, by a negative state- ment that what is so designated is usually not a street or road, but may be almost anything else, from a well-built aristocratic square to a small nondescript area off a back street, or an isolated group of three houses by a suburban wayside. I should be glad of suggestions for a definition.

As to earlier usage, we find T. Washington, in translating Nicolay's * Voyages,' writing, in 1585, of an Oriental city, u The places and streets are well ordeined '' ; A. Lovell, in 1687, writing, ** There are in it many lovely Piazza's or Places, as that which is before the Palace of his Eminence"; and even Macaulay, in 1848, referring to the Piazza Navona at Rome as " the stately Place of Navona." In 1796 J. Owen, in his 'Travels into Europe,' ii. 458, writes of a German city :

them in England, but which the Germans, as well as the French and Italians, more properly denomi- nate Place*. The word in the German is Platz, corresponding to the French Place and the Italian Piazza."
 * ' There are some squares, as we improperly call

This would tend to show that, so late as. 1796, "Place" was at least not common in English street nomenclature. So far as I am acquainted with provincial towns, "Place" does not belong at all to the old nomenclature, but entirely to the era of modern building. In Hawick I think the first "place" dates to about 1830. But it is very desirable to have actual dates for the denomination, not only from London and Bath, but from towns and villages all over the British Isles. Who can produce the earliest "Place"? J. A. H. MURRAY.

"PLACE," " PLACE - MAKING," IN BELL- RINGING. Will any one be so good as to send direct to Dr. Murray, Oxford, an explanation of the technical use of these words in bell- ringing, with dated quotations from the seventeenth century to the twentieth?

J. T. F.

MACAULAY ON " ARABELLA " SEDLEY. In every edition of Macaulay's essays that I have the opportunity of consulting there