Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/507

 10 s. vii. MAY 25, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

419

France, Italy, and Spain match-making is a Government monopoly, and matches accord- ingly are expensive. In France the " Swedish " safety matches are a penny a box, for example ; so that the thrifty peasant or workman uses matches as rarely as possible. Improved flint- and-steel con- trivances, with slow-match attachments, are the subject of very profitable patents, and may be found at any bureau de tabac in country places or working-class neigh- bourhoods. They are in common use by smokers. H. H. S.

" FOBWHY " (10 S. vii. 185, 237, 294, 374). The use of this word in the Prayer-Book Psalms as representing quoniam is not the same as in " And I'll tell you forwhy." No one would say " I'll tell ycu because." The use quoted by MB. RATCLIFFE is more like that to which I called attention, which is amplj, illustrated in the ' N.E.D.'

Durham.

J. T. F.

"HAIL, SMILING MOBN ! " (10 S. vii. 369.) In Bishop How's * Lighter Moments ' (Isbister & Co., 1900) at p. 190 is thia story : "The late Bishop [George] Hills [Bishop of Columbia 1859-93] one Monday morning was stand- ing talking to Mr. [John Garencieres] Pearson, the Vicar of [St. Cuthbert's,] Darlington [1860-73], when a Mr. Maughan (pronounced Morn) came up and handed the bishop some sovereigiis, saying, ' There, my lord, is our yesterday's collection for your fund.' At once Mr. Pearson bowed and said, 'Hail, smiling morn, that tips the hills with gold.' "

By the way, should not " tips " be " tipp'st' ' ? JOHN B. WAINEWBIGHT.

ROCHEB DE GAYETTE (10 S. vii. 329). The answer to COL. FIELD'S very interesting query is as follows. Gayette is an old spelling of Gaete, which is the modern French equivalent of Gaeta ; therefore Rocher de Gayette is a translation of Roccia di Gaeta. Gaeta is well known. It was there that Pope Pius IX. found refuge in 1848, and remained for more than a year. The huge rocky qminence seen in a picture of the town given in ' The Oracle Encyclo- paedia ' is, I presume, the Rocher de Gayette lequel se fendit en deux lors de la passion de Notre Seigneur."

This legend seems to be of ancient date. The Jesuit Padre de Rivadeneira (1527- 1611), after speaking of the stupendous wonders that happened on the death of our Lord as related in the New Testament, has the following passage, which I translate as carefully as I can :

"And these signs and prodigies were not only beheld in Judea, where the Saviour suffered but all

over the earth (according to the most probable and common opinion) the sun was darkened, withdrew the rays ot his light, and was miraculously eclipsed by the interposition of the moon, against all the order of nature, as St. Dionysius the Areopagite has remarked, who, being in Hieropolis, a city in Egypt, and seeing a thing so extraordinary, so.' strange and astounding, uttered these words : 'Either God, the author of nature, is in pain, or the mechanism of the world is being dislocated and undone.' The trembling of the earth was likewise most fearful, and Mount Calvary itself, though of living rock, was rent in twain by a very deep' fissure as broad as a man's body on the Lord's left, side, beneath the bad thief's cross. This fact was mentioned by Lucian, a priest of Antioch, when he was giving an account ot the Christian religion, as a proof of its trvith. Furthermore, this earth- quake was felt in other parts of Asia, and many buildings fell, and some towns were levelled to the ground, and in the town of Gaeta, in the kingdom of Naples, there is a movmtain, and another in the province of Tuscany, which were split asunder (as it is said and commonly believed) by the earth- quake that happened at the time of our Lord's passion." 'Vida y Misterios de Cristo Nuestro- Senor,' Madrid, 1895, pp. 84-5. This good old writer gives as his authorities St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Athanasius, Michael Syngellus "in Vita Dionysii," Eusebius, and Baronius, with others.

JOHN T. CUBBY.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

New and Old Letters to Dead Authors. By Andrew

Lang. (Longmans & Co.)

THIS "Pocket Edition" of Mr. Lang's epistolary appreciations offers fresh pleasure to readers of the original 'Letters to Dead Authors,' for there are seven letters (addressed to Chaucer, Froude, Horace Walpole, Archdeacon Barbour, Richardson, Field- ing, and Tupper) which appeared in an American serial, The Chapbook, but are new, we think, to book-readers. Mr. Lang says in his introduction that his likes and dislikes in literature have not changed much in the course of the twenty years since this book was first printed. For ourselves, we can say that we have read once more with un- abated delight what struck us years ago as sound criticism delivered with a lightness unfortunately rare among scholars and teachers of English. In the studies of Herodotus, Luciari, Theocritus, and Horace there is that charm which comes only of long intimacy and real companionship a charm very different from the factitious enthusiasm of the modern journalist, who makes epigrams on an. author to-day and forgets alike him and them to- morrow. Horace is now too often regarded as a mere master of commonplace, worldly wisdom, and frivolity, and we are glad to see again Mr. Lang's praise of the patriotic ode on Regulus. The cult of Omar Khayyam has faded of late, and if Mr. Lang was going to deal with the Orientalists' view of the subject, he might have referred not only to Omar's date, but also to the fact that, by those best qualified to judge, Omar is far from being re-