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NOTES AND QUERIES. tn s. vi. AUG. 24, 1912.

With reference to the purpose which actuated those who set up the Covent Garden dial in the first place, I quote the following for what it is worth from an eighteenth - century newspaper. It is quite possible that the dial was considered a fitting emblem for a garden, and as an accompaniment to buildings designed from sun temples.

" The elegant portico of Covent Garden is now rendered visible, the pillars being painted white, and the pediment, with all the rest, being of a royal yellow. This building was taken originally from a Temple of the Sun at Balbec." See The Public Advertiser, 16 Aug., 1770, p. 2, col. 3.

The Mast-house at Blacbwall.

The Mast-house at Blackwall was an ugly building used by the firm of Perry, shipbuilders of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for preparing masts. " Masthouse," I may remark, is a " dic- tionary word," and is found both in ' The New Oxford Dictionary ' and in ' The Century Dictionary.' The Mast-house at Blackwall' was taken down by the East and West India Dock Company in 1862.

Those who may be further interested in the history of this matter, and in the firm to which the Mast-house belonged, should refer to " Chronicles of Blackwall Yard, by Henry Green and Robert Wigram, Part I. [no more issued], 1881." This book is one of great interest and research, and gives many delightful biographical details of John Perry (born 1743; died, Battersea, 7 Nov., 1810), whose dockyard was " more capacious than any other private dockyard in the Kingdom, or probably in the world." In the ' Chronicles of Blackwall ' (facing p. 42) will be found an oval portrait of the head and shoulders of John Perry, revealing him as possessed of a very handsome face. His hobby was felling trees. One of his sons, Richard, wrote :

" I think I see my father now, with his face slightly elevated and beaming with intelligence (he was one of the handsomest men of the day), issuing from his hall door armed with a saw or billhook attached to a long pole, with which he operated on the top branches of lofty trees."

One of John Perry's sons was Bishop of Melbourne and a Senior Wrangler. Further details of the family and of their connexion with Blackwall and Moor Hall, Harlow, Essex, will be found in early editions of Burke's ' Landed Gentry.' There are several illustrations of the Mast-house in the British Museum. A. L. HUMPHREYS.

187, Piccadilly, W.

EDWARD GIBBON'S RESIDENCES (11 S. vi. 50). Three excellent books may be consulted as to Gibbon at Lausanne : 1. ' Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne, and Savoy from Roman Times to Voltaire. Rousseau, and Gibbon,' by General Meredith Read, 2 vols., London, 1897 (Chatto & Windus). 2. 'The Girlhood of Maria Josepha Holroyd,' by Jane H. Adeane, London, 1897 (Longmans). 3. 'La Vie de Societe dans le Pays de Vaud a la Fin du Dix-huitieme Siecle,' par M. et Madame William de Severy, 2 vols., 1911-12 (Lau- sanne, Georges Bridel & Cie. ; Paris, Fisch- bacher).

General Read in his preface says :

" Of this work the text is a house a house from which we survey the passage of a thousand years, six hundred of which are associated with its

existence These pages owe their origin to my

interest in Gibbon." Vol. i. p. xv.

"La Grotte, where Gibbon dwelt during the last ten! years of his life, is an ancient and spacious mansion situated behind the church of St. Francis at Lausanne." I. p. 1.

"If we may trust one legend, monks were chanting within La Grotte when Richard Cceur de Lion was battling in the Holy Land before he became King of England, Cyprus and Jerusalem." P. 7.

General Read gives explicit accounts of the character and site of historic La Grotte (since 1893 replaced by the new post office building), where Gibbon lived with its owner, his friend Georges Deyverdun, from 1784 until 1789; and where, in consequence of the latter's testamentary provisions, he continued to reside after Deyverdun's death until May, 1793, when he returned to die in England. A picture of the north exterior of the mansion is in vol. i. p. 7, and one of the south front and its terrace in vol. ii. p. 494.

The story of the visit paid to Gibbon at La Grotte by Lord and Lady Sheffield and their two daughters, July-October, 1791, is related in the second book above men- tioned. It has chiefly to do with the social events of their stay at Lausanne and the personages of Gibbon's coterie.

The first seventy-one pages of the second volume of M. and Madame de Severy's most valuable and interesting work are devoted to Gibbon and " le genre de vie de Gibbon a Lausanne." His first place of domicile there in 1753, as a youth of 16, under the Calvinist minister Daniel Pavil- lard, is the subject of a note on p. 8 :

"La demeure du professeur Pavillard, autrefois la cure d'un des quatres pasteurs de la ville, appartient aujourd'hui a la Commune de Lausanne.