Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/285

 ns.v.MAR.23,1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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a spirit of fanatical censorship ? That Tacitus's works were not widely circulated towards the end of the third century is shown by the special instructions given by the emperor who bore his name and claimed kinship with him. The extreme shortness of this emperor's reign must have impaired the effectiveness of his orders. The decay of literature and taste would no doubt cause Tacitus to be neglected in favour of briefer works, sucfr as Suetonius's ' Lives.'

It is a curious fact that in modern days a French critic has maintained that Tacitus's account of the Neronian persecution is a Christian forgery ! See P. Hochart. ' Etudes an Sujet de la Persecution des Chretiens sous Nero,' Paris, 1885.

EDWABD BENSLY.

Univ. Coll., Aberystwyth.

SARTTM MISSAL : MS. ADDITIONS (11 S. v. 163). The Collect and Secreta of St. Chad are at the end of the printed ' Arbuthnot Missal,' p. 478. The Postcommunio is in the Appendix to Warren's ' Leofric Missal,' p. 306, in a mass for the Deposition of St. Aidan, where the first word is rightly printed " Satiatis." I have tried without success to verify the reference " Augustini O. v. xv." I suppose that " O " stands for " Omelia," meaning one of the sermons or homilies. Can any one point out the passage referred to ? There is something like " nee cogitant quid dicunt " in a ' Sermo ex commentario beati Augustini episcopi (super Johan. tract, xx vi., b),' from which the lections in the Sarum Breviary for the fourth feria after Pentecost are taken :

" Ore autem confessio fit ad salutem Hoc est

enim confiteri, dicere quod habes in corde. Si enim aliud cprde habes, aliud dicis : loqueris, non confiteris." Procter and Wordsworth's ed., col. mxviii.

J. 1. -T.

Durham.

"UNITED STATES SECURITY " (11 S. iv. 508 ; v. 115). Sydney Smith waxed very indignant over the repudiation by Penn- sylvania of some of her obligations (see ' Letters on American Debts,' in ' Collected Works,' 3 vols., vol. iii. pp. 441-50, 1845). The following is extracted from his letter to the editor of The Morning Chronicle, and is dated 3 November, 1843 :

" I never meet a Pennsylvanian at a London dinner without feeling a disposition to seize and divide him ; to allot 'his beaver to one sufferer and his coat to another to appropriate his pocket-handkerchief to the orphan, and to com- fort the widow with his silver watch, Broadway rings, and the London Guide, which he always carries in his pockets. How such a man can set

himself down at an English table without feeling that he owes two or three pounds to every man in company I am at a loss to conceive : he has no more right to eat with honest men than a leper has to eat with clean men. If he have a particle of honour in his composition he should shut himself up, and say, ' I cannot mingle with you T I belong to a degraded people I must hide myself I am a plunderer from Pennsylvania.'

The following is the commencement of " THE HUMBLE PETITION* of the Rev. Sydney Smith to the House of Congress at Washington. " I petition your honourable House to institute some measures for the restoration of American credit, and for the repayment of debts incurred and repudiated by several of the States. Your Petitioner lent to the State of Pennsylvania a sum of money, for the purpose of some public improvement. The amount, though small, is to him important, and is a saving from a life income, made with difficulty and privation."- See ' Collected Works,' vol. iii. p. 441.

WM. H. PEET.

TOP -HAT IN SCULPTURE (US. v. 14C). The statue erected in the Old Kent Road to the memory of the late Sir Geo. Livesey may not be strictly artistic, but it shows the man as he was best known at the South Metropolitan Gas Company, with one hand in his trouser pocket, and carrying in the other not a top-hat, but what, for want of a better description, one may call a three - quarter - square hard felt one. He was seldom seen with the hat on his head. S. S. McDowALL.

ST. SWITHIN is wrong in supposing that Sir George Livesey's "top-hat' ; was the first that " tempted the sculptor's chisel." The statue of James Oswald of Auchin- cruive, by Marochetti, has been standing, hat in hand, in George Square, Glasgow. for well-nigh forty years. Previously, it stood in a prominent position in Sauchiehall Street, where the hat received contributions of stones from small boys by day and of pennies from roisterous young men by night, the hat being found useful as a test of skilful marksmanship. James Oswald belonged to a family of old Glasgow merchants. He took a prominent part in the Reform agita- tion which resulted in the passing of the Act of 1832, and he represented Glasgow in Parliament from 1832 to 1837, and from 1839 to 1847. G.

Cathcart.

There is another statue carrying a top- hat, that of the late Henry Fawcett, founder of the State savings banks, &c. It stands in the market-place of Salisbury, facing his father's house and shop. T. WILSON.