Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/540

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. vm. DEC. 7, 1907.

Western eyes, and I leave you to guess the effect it had upon me. A great flat iron weight, having About a dozen ropes tied to it on the upper side, was thrown into the trench ; as many men seized hold of the ropes, and the mass of iron was alter- nately jerked into the air by pulling the ropes, and then allowed to fall heavily. The funniest part of the matter was that all the time the thing was at work the men kept up a sing-song ; sometimes a precentor standing by would sing a solo, the men at the ropes taking up the chorus, but only working when they themselves were singing. We were told by the contractor that the singing prevented the men from falling asleep while at work ! " Pp. 138-9.

ST. SWITHIN.

MBS. HEMANS AND ' THE HEBBEW MOTHER.' The little poem thus entitled <(Moxon's edition, p. 379) begins thus :

The rose was in rich bloom on Sharon's plain When a young mother, with her first-born, thence Went up to Zion, for the boy was vowed Unto the Temple service.

Now it is evident that for " Zion " we should read "Shiloh." When Samuel was born, indeed, Sion was in the hands of the -Jebusites, and no Hebrew mother could have gone there until it was taken long afterwards by David. A friend who was taught the poem when young thinks that the reading was Shiloh in an early edition ; but this is very unlikely, because subsequent editors would hardly alter what was correct and make it wrong. Elkanah's house " in the hill-country of Ephraim " is not very accurately described as "on .Sharon's plain." W. T. LYNN.

Blackheath.

RICHARD SANDS, EQUESTRIAN, 1814-61. There is an account of him in Boase's '* Modern English Biography,' iii. 406. He gave an exhibition of his circus at Don- caster, the great Yorkshire race-town, on 17 Oct., 1843. On the handbills which were distributed at the time the show is called " Richard Sands' American Circus .... unequalled American Equestrians .... highly trained stud of American Horses " ; and Mr. Sands describes himself as " Pro- prietor of the New York Amphitheatre, and late Lessee of the English Opera House, London." This last-mentioned point in his history is not included in Mr. Boase's book. W. C. B.

LONDON NEWSPAPERS IN 1818: THEIR CIRCULATION. From a " Statement to the Public" advertised in this year by the proprietors of The Observer, it appears that there were then printed in London 14 daily, "7 three-day-a-week, and 30 weekly news- papers, and that the greatest number were

issued from the Observer printing-office. Affidavits were sworn by George Goodger and Matthew Brown, assistant publishers, and by twelve pressmen (printers), that the average sale o\ The Observer was upwards of 10,800 weekly ; and that for one quarter of twelve weeks they had published and fairly sold (with the exception of 28 copies presented to the proprietors' friends), and paid the full amount over to the proprietors for 130,493 stamped papers ; further, that frequently, when the public mind was excited by particular events, from one to seven thousand extra papers had been sold.

R. S. B.

HENRY GARNET, JESUIT. I see that the ' D.N.B.,' without definitely stating its authority, says that Henry Garnet (whose name figures so prominently in connexion with the Gunpowder Plot) " was born at Heanor not at Nottingham, as is commonly stated." In the course of a recent search, for another name, in the Heanor parish register, I found the following note of the burial of Brian Garnet, father of Henry, in 1576, which lends weight to the above state- ment : " Brian Garnett, Late Skoolmaster of Nottingham, was buried ye xxith day of November." A. STAPLETON.

ARMS or MAURITIUS. These were granted by royal warrant dated 25 Aug., 1906, and are described therein as follows :

" Quarterly azure and or, in the first quarter a lymphad of the last ; in the second three palm trees eradicated vert; in the third a key in pale, the wards downwards, gules ; and in the last, issuant from the base, a pile, and in chief a mullet argent."

The supporters are :

"On the dexter side a dodo per bend sinister embattled gules and argent, and on the sinister side a sambur deer per bend embattled argent and gules, each supporting a sugar cane erect proper."

The motto is " Stella Clavisque Maris Indici." L. L. K.

EMBARKATION OF CROMWELL AND HAMP- DEN PREVENTED. Prefixed to vol. vi. of the " Cabinet " ' History of England,' 1834, by Hume and Smollett, with continuation by the Rev. T. S. Hughes, is a small vignette, artistically engraved after a painting by H. Tresham, R.A., entitled ' Emigration of Cromwell Prevented.' This is, in all pro- bability, a reduction from a large engrav- ing in the folio history published in 1803. The boat, with two standing figures in it, is just being loosened from a ring bolt on a landing-place, when an officer with a drawn sword presents his warrant.