Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 3.djvu/445

 us.m.ju>-E3,i9ii.j NOTES AND QUERIES.

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said : ' Why ! those are my words, are they not Annie,' turning to his youngest daughter, who at the moment was gracefully coming through the low window opening out on the terrace, at the same time repeating the identical rhythm that but a moment before I had signalized as a sample of ' rubbish.'

" Miss Annie looked up laughingly, and said in her cheery voice, ' Why, of course, papa, that comes in your nursery collection. Don't you remember when Edith was a little girl, and didn't want to have her hair curled, you took her up in your arms, and shaking your finger at her, commenced, ' There was a little girl,' &c. The poet laughed, they all laughed, and I, in spite of my discomfiture, joined hi the general merriment."

JOHN TRUE LOOMIS. Washington, D.C.

'BELGRAVIA,' A POEM (US. iii. 329, 377). Will MR. R. A. POTTS please accept many thanks for the information he gave me respecting the above-named poem ? I am still at a loss to know where I should be most likely to obtain it. BETTY LAWRENCE.

The Ryelands, Hereford.

SHAKESPEARE AND THE PRAYER BOOK (11 S. iii. 301, 391). If MR. MCELWAINE will look at my note again, he will see that I have quoted "pickers and stealers" from ' Hamlet,' W. C. B.

on

Grace Book A : containing the Records of the University of Cambridge for the Years 1542-89. Edited by John Venn. (Cambridge University

Press.)

THE title of this volume is enough to show its interest to historians and all who wish to know about the earlier life of Cambridge. The Graces iu themselves are clothed generally in dull Latin, and so far as they concern degrees are of no great interest ; but there are others which concern the executive business of the University, and contain a great deal of moment for the expert. The admirable Introduction by Dr. Venn will put readers in the way of realizing the problems and facts here brought before them, and will show incidentally how much the University still retains from earlier days in its modern system. The Caput, the executive body of the University, " was only superseded by the present " Council of the Senate " during the reforms introduced in 1860," and some present reformers have noticed with satisfaction that in Elizabethan days this important body was up to date enough to have an average age of j'ust thirty-one.

Among other matters discussed hi the very interesting Introduction are the absence till com- paratively recent times of a real order of merit iu examination, and the meagre connexion between tbo fact of being high in honours and a fellowship. The curious privilege of the foundation ers of

King's College, who obtained the B.A. and M.A. without any University examination, is also con- sidered, and still remains somewhat obscure. Dr. Venn concludes that the claiming of exemp- tions began about 1510-25, but that examination was not avoided till much later. It is odd that such a privilege shoxild not have been clearly ex- plained, and traced to its beginning hi some record or other.

A series of admirable indexes complete the work, which, with its predecessors, forms an invaluable contribution to University history.

The Coronation of Edward the Seventh : a Chapter of European and Imperial History. By John Edward Courtenay Bodley. New Issue with a New Preface. (Methuen & Co.)

WHEN this book was first published our late Editor, Joseph Knight, wrote of it in ' N. & Q.' for 1 August, 1903, that " to some extent it is a condensed account of the nineteenth century," and pronounced it to be " at once a companion and a supplement to the same author's ' France,' " and as such likely to occupy " a permanent place in literature."

The Preface to this new issue, dated St. George's Day, 1911, is full of thoughtful suggestions, and forms a valuable addition, for although it occupies only about thirty pages, in these is given a survey of the march of events since the Coronation of the late King, but nine years ago. " In our own history of that short period," says Mr. Bodley, " one feature stands out prominent. Amid the break-up of old political parties and assaults from all sides upon the British Constitution which were not anticipated when the last reign began, the stability of the Throne has been confirmed. The influence of the Crown gives promise of becoming stronger than it ever has been, and of being ' a bond of union ' in a larger sense than that which Burke applied to those words when he so de- scribed the British Crown at the tune of the French Revolution."

Mr. Bodley then proceeds to " examine the general courses of the enhanced power and value of the Crown in our nation, at a period of change the like of which the human race has never seen before." The " mechanical age " which was just beginning in 1838 with the application of steam and electricity to means of production, of loco- motion, and of communication was " preparing a revolution more profound than any political or social reform devised by lawgivers or demanded by people. . . .In Europe and America the effects of the mechanical age are only just now being realized. They are so overwhelming as to bewilder the most attentive observers " : and the reason why they have not been rightly \mderstood is " because the men who until the other day were directing the affairs and the thought of peoples were born under conditions which now belong as completely to the past as those of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries."

Mr. Bodley is not among the pessimists, and maintains that the age in which we are living is not decadent, but " an age of transition, so rapid, so over-ruling that all the standards whereby human genius and power have been measured are being transformed under our eyes " ; and he predicts that the reign of our present King " will see more marvels performed by the human race than that of any one of his predecessors."