Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/196

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIL FEB. 23, 1907.

Jt contains an engraving of Hindlip Hall, which was evidently a highly picturesque Tudor mansion. It was pulled down long ago. We are told by a writer who had seen it that it contained many hiding-places and secret passages.

Mr. R. H. Murray's paper on the evolution ot church chancels will be found useful in many respects. The engravings showing the arrangement of the chancels during the Puritan ascendancy are important contributions to knowledge. The writer, who is evidently a humorous person, tells a story of a certain church in Gloucestershire where a stranger clergyman, on a certain occasion, was called upon to preach, and was asked by the churchwarden if he would deliver his discourse from the reading- desk, as a hen-turkey was sitting on her nest in the pulpit. A similar tale is current as to several of the churches in the fenlands of the East Coast, with the variation that a goose takes the place of the turkey. The story occurs in Arthur Young's Lincoln,' 1799, p. 437 ; but it is probably far older than his time.
 * General View of the Agriculture of the County of

The Quarterly Review : January, 1907. (Murray.) ' FOXHUNTING OLD AND NEW ' is an admirable paper. It is unsigned, but obviously written by some one who has had a manysided experience of the sport. He is not only conversant with Beck- ford's ' Thoughts on Hunting,' but also knows his Nimrod and Surtees, as well as many of the earlier and more recent sporting books. The writer gives what seems to be a complete catalogue of the ladies who own packs of hounds at this day, and it is highly satisfactory to note that all are reported to be well acquainted with the duties of the position. Lady Salisbury, who is spoken of as the most famous horsewoman of the eighteenth century, kept a pack of hounds at Hatfield, and was the first woman who was master of hounds. This we do not doubt is .strictly true, if we regard hunting from the sports- man's point of view only, but surely not otherwise. In far earlier times the Northern shires possessed women who kept dogs of various kinds for the purpose of killing foxes, which they regarded as noxious vermin which ate the lambs and pillaged the hen-roosts. Lady Salisbury's was a pack of dwarf hounds, and the uniform sky-blue. Scarlet had not then become the almost universal garb in the hunting field. It may be well to remember this, for we fear there are yet people who still hold to the fable that it has been the costume of the hunt- ing man since the days of William Rufus. It seems there are about 175 packs of hounds in our island. This means about 12,000 hounds, and the expen- diture is reckoned at half a million sterling, a sum which would have horrified the old - fashioned utilitarian.

Mr. R. E. Prothero writes on ' The Growth of the Historical Novel.' We have been much interested in his paper, which shows wide reading ; but some of the books he mentions can hardly be included in the historical series. If they were, nearly all novels might find a place with them. We have read hardly one which does not indicate usually in a manner exaggerated more or less the manners of the times in which the writer flourished. 'The Gipsey Girl,' by Hannah Maria Jones, published in 1837, is, for example, worthless as literature, but as we imagine, unconsciously to the writer conveys instruction as to the manners of the time in which she lived.

Prof. C. H. Herford's ' Ruskin and the Gothic Revival' goes back to an earlier time than that usually attributed to that movement. Did Gothic in truth ever wholly die out ? There is seventeenth-century Gothic at Oxford ; and we have seen chests of the same character, undoubtedly made by village carpenters, bearing dates of the early part of the eighteenth century.

Miss Ida Taylor's article on the Hotel cle Rani- bouillet and that by Prof. Saintsbury entitled 'Honore de Balzac arid M. Brunetiere' are both well worth reading.

MESSRS. J. W. VICKERS & Co. have sent us their Xtwxpaper Gazetteer. This annual reference book of the press for the United Kingdom and the colonies is produced with its usual accuracy. The editor modestly states in his short introduction that "any suggestions which may be likely to lead to corrections and improvements will be gladly received and greatly valued."

THE SHAKESPEARE HEAD PRESS, which has just completed the printing of the magnificent " Strat- ford Town " Shakespeare, announces a second series of Mr. Charles Crawford's 'Collectanea.' This volume consists of articles showing the influence exercised by Montaigne on Webster and Marston, and the relations between the styles of Donne and Webster, illustrated by a number of parallel pas- sages. But the most interesting part is the study of the "Bacon-Shakespeare Question," to which Mr. Crawford has given six years' close attention. It consists of a serious refutation of Baconian arguments, proving that Bacon's supporters are ill acquainted not only with the mass of Elizabethan literature, but also with the work of Bacon himself.

THE same Press will issue shortly 'A Cypress Grove,' by Drummond of Hawthornden. Mr. A. H. Bullen contributes a short introduction, and Fin- layson's mezzotint of Cornelius Johnson's portrait of Drummond is reproduced as frontispiece. To the students of the works of Sir Thomas Browne the finished prose of his Scottish precursor has a special interest. This interesting reprint will be issued on hand-made paper, tastefully printed and bound.

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