Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/171

 ii s. in. MAR. 4, MIL] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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to her and Harriet Byron as " junge Frauen- zimmer von guter Erziehung, und munterer Gemiitsart " (vol. vii. p. 399).

Some excellent remarks on the influence of the characters of Anna Howe and of Charlotte Grandison on the English novel are to be found in a work by Wilhelm Dibelius entitled * Englische Romankunst.'

H. G. WARD.

Aachen.

CAPT. COOK MEMORIAL. Now that the long outstanding debt of Britain to its great sailor is about to be paid by the erection of his statue in the Metropolis, I may call to mind, as a possible stimulus to subscribers, the way his achievement and death impressed the imagination of his con- temporaries in England and on the Continent, as shown by one or two of the monuments, less individual than a statue, which were raised in England and France to comme- morate his voyages. That these should have sometimes taken the form of tombs, tablets, and memorials in gardens was in the taste of the time, which had lately brought to the highest pitch of poignancy the Sentimental Farm of Southcote at Woburn and the Jardin Larmoyant of Shenstone at the Leasowes.

In Lord Temple's gardens at Stowe, for instance (where Nelson was later com- memorated by a seat and a walk), a monu- ment to the memory of Cook was erected on one of the small islands, in what was called the Grotto River. The pedestal supported a terrestrial globe, upon which are delineated the equatorial, tropical, and other lines, with the following inscription :

Te maris et terrse numeroque carentis arena; Mensorem.

'Twas thine to track the Ocean's endless round, Each distant shore and Earth's extremest bound. And in the die at the pedestal was inserted a medallion of Captain Cook in marble and under it a tablet

Jacobo Cook MDCCLXXVIII. In the Garden at Mereville (erected by La Borde, and engraved in his ' Nouveaux Jardins de la France') was raised " Le Tombeau de Cook " (in macabre rivalry to the real tomb of Rousseau on the Isle of Poplars at Ermenonville), with bas-reliefs of savages, broken columns, and funerary urns ; but the monument was less truly a tribute to Cook than to La Borde' s two sailor sons, shipmates with La Perouse, the great French circumnavigator, who perished in the South Seas in 1788, but whose fate was only definitely ascertained in 1828.

At Chalfont St. Giles, Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser, Lord of the Vache, erected a brick building with a pedestal in front of it to Captain James Cook, " the ablest and most renowned navigator this or any other country hath produced."

It is right that Cook's statue should be? set up immediately after that of General Wolfe ; for Cook, when Master of the "Mercury" and not yet a Naval Lieutenant r took the soundings in the St. Lawrence, and made a chart of the river below Quebec, which must have materially contributed to the success of Wolfe's landing at the Cove named after him and of his victory on the Heights of Abraham. An obelisk, 100ft. high, stands upon a hill in the Park at Stowe, inscribed to Major-General Wolfe: Ostendunt terris hunc tantum Fata. The Fates but shew him to the world.

February 14, St. Valentine's Day, is the anniversary of Cook's death in 1779.

A. FORBES SIEVEKING. 12, Seymour Street, W.

BAPTISMAL SCARF. At the baptism of Earl Fitz William's son and heir at Went- worth Woodhouse on llth February we are told that

" the babe was borne to the chapel wrapped in the famous Norman scarf presented to an ancestor by William the Conqueror. This scarf has played an important part in the christening of Fitzwilliam heirs for centuries. It has a, romantic history. An ancestor of the Fitz- williams was Ambassador at the Court of William of Normandy, and attended the Conqueror on his expedition to England in the year 1060. Sir William Fitzwilliam displayed such conspicuous bravery at the battle of Hastings that the Con- queror unfastened a scarf from his arm and pre- sented it to him in recognition of his valour." Eastern Morning News, 13 Feb. When Sir Robert Southwell was at Milton in 1684 Lord Fitzwilliam showed him

" the antiquities of his family, amour: whom the last twelve have been called Williams. They have affected this name from William Fitzwilliams, who entered with the Conqueror, and being Marshal of the Lamp [an error for Camp] in the famous fight of Battle Abbey, the Conqueror gave him his own scarf in reward of his prowess- that day. This scarf they preserve sacred, and by custom lay it over the face of all the male children when christened." ' Calendar of Or- monde MSS.,' N.S. iv. 594 (1906).

W. C. B.

SNEAK. The * Century Dictionary ' gives a quotation from * Rode- rick Random ' in illustration of the meaning of scout as a spy, a sneak, but it would seem to have t been of decidedly earlier use. In the * Acts of the Privy Council of England,