Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/126

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [u s. ix. FEB. 7, 101*.

The chapters on the Petre family ; on sundry notabilities (e.g., the Suttons) connected with Ingatestone and Fryerning ; the pages concerned with the Essex Great Road ; and those describing the halls and houses and their various occu piers, are perhaps the best.

Mrs. Archibald Christy's contribution is a bit of careful historical work deserving both of atten- tion and praise. Herbert Fry's Royal Guide to the London Charities.

(Chatto & Windus.)

THIS is the Jubilee year of this useful work, and the editor, Mr. John Lane, traces in his Preface the changes that have taken place m the .London charities during the past fifty years. The in- creasing interest evinced by the public is shown by the fact that the total amount bestowed during last year, including the sum of about a million left by Lord Wandsworth for the foundation and endowment of an orphanage, reached 3,724,5-71*. 4.mong important changes recorded is the removal of King's College Hospital to Denmark Hill on a site of twelve acres given by the Chair- man, the Hon. W. F. D. Smith (now Viscount Hambleden^. Another enterprise is the founding of a Hospital for Women, to be staffed entirely by women doctors. A curious incident occurred at the London Hospital : " Upon the writing- table in the secretary's private room was found a parcel addressed to that gentleman. The sug- gestion was made that it might contain a bomb, and special precautions were taken in its handling. When the string was cut, bearer bonds to the amount of 10,OOOZ. were discovered." There was nothing to identify the sender, and inquiries only elicited the fact that " a gentleman had laid the package on the table and left the hospital without saying a word to any one."

THE literary and cognate articles of this month's Fortnightly Etmtw are interesting even to a some- what unusual degree. We have at the head of them Mr. Edmund Gosse's portrait of Lady Dorothy Nevill done in the guise of an open letter to Lady Burghclere which has decidedly, and in good measure, the qualities of a work of art, over and above its careful adherence to the original as he knew her. Mr. Yone Noguchi's 'Some Stories of my Western Life' is curious and valuable as a record of facts to most of the world obscure, and, yet more, arresting for the poetical power which manifests itself through the medium of a language which proves the more oddly effective because it has not been mastered by the writer to anything approaching final perfection. Mr. E. A. Baughan is worth attending to on the subject of ' A Practical Reper- tory Theatre ' ; and Mr. J. A. T. Lloyd provides a rather inadequate, but still, so far as it goes, clever and instructive account of Dostoieffsky. Mr. J. Eglinton's ' Wordsworth at Rydal Mount,' though it" hardly succeeds in rendering attractive that aspect of the poet's acknowledged egotism which lias always chilled all but the most enthusiastic Wordsworthians, yet has several good original remarks, which may well make, so to speak, a difference to the light by which his readers see him.

THE fourteen lines of blank verse by Robert Browning, with which The Cornhill for February begins, are somewhat misnamed a "sonnet," and will, we think, appeal only to the curious. Mr. H. Warner Allen's paper on ' The Real Syndicalism

s in some ways the most important contribution to the number. Syndicalism has suffered as much as Socialism from that one - sided presentment which not only disseminates error, but also balks salutary criticism, and here the constructive not the all too familiar destructive aspect of the movement is brought into view. Mr. A. C. Benson in ' That Other One ' draws out, with an unusually sure and controlled touch, an experience which, though probably universal, seldom comes to ex- pression. Canon Rawnsley's sketch of Sir Robert Hunter is both well done and worth the doing. We always like Sir Henry Lucy's 'Sixty Years in the Wilderness,' but this particular instalment has pleased us better than any. Mr. Gilbert Coleridge is happy in his portrait of ' Rory of the Glen.' The two stories especially ' The Witch of Kan'dor 'are somewhat above what we should call the recent average of The Cornhill in this kind of contribution. On the other hand, we spent a minute or two in puzzling over what secret merit it was that had obtained admission to these pages for so jejune a performance as ' The Old House and the New.'

The Nineteenth Century for February is a some- what markedly controversial number. Readers of ' N. & Q.' will, however, find in Mr. D. T. B. Wood's paper on ' The True History of the Fabrication of the Armada Mercuries ' a bit of work after their own heart, and one which has the rare quality of finality. 'England's Duty towards Wild Birds' is forcibly set out by Dr. W. T. Hornaday. Director of the New York Zoological Park, and by Mr. Frank E. Lemon. A pleasant paper, and one that has a distinct literary flavour, is Miss E. A. Drew's 'Clubland Two Hundred Years Ago.' Dr. Louis Robinson on 'The Natural History of Dancing' describes very amusingly the primitive func- tion of that art, or practice, in keeping the warriors of a savage tribe in a " fit " condi- tion, despite the perils of excessive exertion on the one hand, and torpor after gorging themselves at feasts in times of victory or peace on the other. He notes among negroes, and savages generally, as also among women, the capacity to dance when unable either to work or walk ; the like, so far as the ability to dance all night after a hard day's climbing goes, might be said of Alpine mountaineers. Mr. Norman Pearson has in ' Fish " Craufurd ' a good subject for an article, and has handled it spiritedly and well.

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WE cannot undertake to answer queries privately, nor can we advise correspondents as to the value of old books and other objects or as to the means of disposing of them.

MR. W. L. KING and DR. J. WILLCOCK. Forwarded.

JOHNSON BRIGHAM (Iowa State Library, Des Moines). Many thanks for reply anticipated at 11 S. viii. 415.

ROOKS' JUSTICE, (11 S. viii. 469, 516). H. S. writes : " Under the heading * Extraordinary Assemblies of Birds,' much information germane to this will be found in 'N. & Q.' for 1867 (3 S. xi. 10, 106, 166, 220, et seq.)