Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/147

 10 s. vii. FEB. 9, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

heir -apparent, induced by his Stanmer hosts, visited Brighthelmstone, and there was a great display of fireworks that night on the Steine, on the site HOW occupied by the Pavilion Parade and Prince's Street. In thre'e years the Pavilion was completed, and Brighton's royal patron at once heuan to "make things hum." Mr. Escott points out that the pedestrian competitions of the Stock Exchange are a revival of a Georgian fashion. The Regent set the pace for riding matches between the Old Steine and his London palace. " He himself rode the double journey in ten hours," and that feat was surpassed by an officer of the Light Dragoons, who "rode from Brighton to Westminster on the same horse in three hours and twenty minutes, stopping only at Reigate to take a glass of wine, pouring the rest of the bottle down his horse's throat." One of the amusements of the Prince was to bring down pigeons with rifle-ballets on the Steine. Although he occasionally missed his bird, he did " great execution among his neighbours' chimney pots."

In the account of Longleat we find that among the archives are hymns by Ken as yet unpublished. We have had so much about Ken in ' N. & Q.,' Dean Plumptre availing himself of our columns for information for his life of Ken, that our readers will be interested in the lines quoted by Mr. Escott, ' An Anodyne for Pain ' :

One day of pain improves me more Than years of ease could do before ; It is by pain God me instructs, And so to endless bliss conducts.

Air. Escott' s book brings before us glimpses of most of the famous men and women who have been guests in the various houses mentioned. We learn that Dickens at Eridge one Saturday evening, walking with Millais and looking into the moat there, conceived the idea of ' The Mystery of Edwin Drood.' The younger Hood is said during twenty years to have exercised " a refining influ- ence upon all the departments of journalism in which he worked." Reference is made to Palmer- ston and his pathetic speech in the House of Commons on the death of Lord Herbert of Lea : " I had trusted that after I was gone he would lead the gentlemen of England." We have Douglas Cook, whom Walter Thornbury caricatured in his novel ' Greatheart' : "A Napoleon of editors indeed, but, mercy on us ! what a temper ! " The Rev. R. S. Hawker scrupulously avoided in his conversation any approach to controversial topics, clerical or lay: " Directly there seemed a danger of such being broached, he would rise from his chair by the table at which he habitually sat, and, leading me to the window looking out upon the Atlantic, would say, ' There you have my views ; as to my ideas, they are that, if the human eye could reach so far, you might see right away to Labrador.'" We have Carlyle "pointing out to Prince Jerome Napoleon the perfection of English naval construction," and winding up with the remark, "If one of our ships meets a Frenchman of her own size, she blows her into atoms." We have the nineteenth - century Thomas and William Longman, who were "the social princes of their guild : two more finished gentlemen were never seen at the covert side ; two more courteous and discriminating judges of writing never walked from Paternoster Row to the Athe- iiiuum Club." The Hertfordshire house of the latter Mr. Escott promises to visit in due course.

The elder brother, outliving William by two years r continued his hospitality at Farnboroiigh till 1879. As is well known, the Empress Eugenie purchased the estate from Mr. T. Norton Longman, and "at the present time the palace built by an English publisher is therefore the monument of French Imperialism."

It is curious to read that until long into the sixties "the press" for the peerage used to mean The Times, and that Mr. Markham Spofforth first discovered " the power of the penny newspaper."

The few extracts we have had space to give show what a fund of information and amusement Miv Escott has provided for his readers, and we can well see that he has plenty more in reserve.

Visitation of England and Wale*. Edited by

Frederick Arthur Crisp. Vol. XIII. (Privately

printed. )

THIS important work steadily increases in value.. The plan on which it is arranged is excellent, and is most conscientiously carried out. None of the genealogies goes back to remote times. The pedigrees given almost all of them begin in the eighteenth century, and are carried down to the present day. This is as it should be. The more remote lines of descent, if they exist, are comnionly accessible in other works of reference ; but it is most desirable for us to have in a tabulated form the recent evolution of contemporary families. If the old heralds, when they compiled their visitations, had been as careful as Mr. Crisp, much knowledge would have been preserved that is now lost beyond recovery.

The volume before us contains minute details regarding the modern descent of six peers and three baronets with their relatives, in a much fuller form than is to be found elsewhere. These elaborate compilations must have been a work of immense labour, and so far as regards the families with whose history we are acquainted, we are sure that a high level of accuracy has been arrived at. Indeed, we have not come upon a single error, though instances might be pointed out where it seems to have been impossible to give full details.

Future historians and genealogists, not only of this country, but of by far the greater part of the civilized world, cannot but be grateful to Mr. Crisp ; for the British race is now so widely scattered that without an elaborate compilation o'f this nature it would be virtually impossible to trace the origins of many who in after days may become noteworthy. As examples we may draw attention to the fact that in the volume before us the families of Vidler, Graham, Auden, and Spedding have colonial representatives.

We are glad to find that the arms of the various families are given, and a note is furnished in each case relating to those which are on the register of the College of Arms.

The pedigree of the present Earl Nelson is most interesting; we turned to it before reading any other part of the book. We are pretty sure that nothing so elaborate can be found elsewhere. The arms are given in a full-page engraving. They were granted at a time \vheii Avhat Aye may call the pictorial heraldry fashionable during a greater part of the eighteenth century had not become extinct ; consequently an augmentation was given which is in the worst possible taste. At the present time our heraldic authorities have happily become aware that a coat of arms is a symbol, not 'a picture.