Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/210

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. v. A., 1919.

French general, as coming from fwch, a patois word of the Haute Garonne, which signifies "fire." The locality in question being close to/ the Pyrenees, this dialect term is ostensibly nothing more than a variant of Catalonian fog, Span, fuego, FT. feu, Port, fogo, Ital. fuoco, Prov. foes, Roum. foe, from Lat. fccus, a hearth : a philological consummation devoutly to be wished in view of the fact that the attribute, ardour, is in an especial degree appropriate to the mentality of the great French soldier, whose well-laid plans eventually overcame the deep designs and pretentious claims of Prussian militarism. N. W. HILL.

THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD'S BIRTH- PLACE. Monypenny's 'Life' (1910), says that Isaac D' Israeli, who had been living in chambers in James Street, Adelphi, moved to King's Road, Bedford Row, on his marriage, and there his eldest son Benjamin was born ; a foot-note stating that the house is now 22 Theobalds Road, and that, oddly enough, Lord Beaconsfield seemed never to have been certain either of the place or the year in which it occurred. An editorial note in ' N. & Q.', 6 S. iii. 360 (1881), states that the date Dec. 21, 1804, had been fixed, " but not so the number of the house in the Adelphi where the late peer was born." The ' D.N.B.' gives 6 John Street, Bedford Row, as the birthplace. In ' The Life and Reminiscences of E. L. Blanchard,' 1891, Blanchard thus spoke or wrote of 6 Adelphi Terrace (where he lived from 1876 to 1889), p. 631 :

Isaac DTsraeli was lodging in an adjoining street where, his wife being near her confinement, the doctor advised a removal to a house where a better view and fresher air could be obtained. D'Israeli came to this house, and it was in this very room that the statesman was born."

And on p. 600 referring to " his own room on the third floor," Blanchard says :

House, where Raleigh smoked his first pipe in England. It was in this very room that Benjamin Disraeli was born, just eighty years ago."
 * ' We are sitting now on the site of Durham

The second of these two extracts seems to have appeared in The World in December, 1886, and the first of them in The Star in February, 1889.

Unless better evidence has been forth- coming, can the officially-placed tablet which now commemorates the house in Theobald's Road be implicitly relied upon ?

W. B. H.

[See also 6 S. x. 310, 363 ; 7 S. iii. 441 ; 9 S. iv. 895, 526; 10 S. vi. 357; 11 S. viii. 119.]

EARLY MAPS. The following paragraph,. which is cited from Scientific America^ May 31, 1919, urder the heading of ' Science,*" p. 569 (Munn & Co., New York), seems: perhaps worth reproduction in 'N. & Q.' : n THE EARLIEST PLAN OF NEW YORK.

Dr. F. C. Wieder, of the Royal Netherlands. Geographical Society, who has recently carried' out extensive investigations concerning early explorations of the region about the present site- of New York city, has brought to light an earlier! plan of New York than any previously known- According to an account of this discovery pub- ished in The Geographical Journal the map- appears to have been based on a survey made in 1660, and shows a regular series of intercrossing" streets, proving that even at that period, though- few houses had been erected, the whole plan of the City had been laid out, even to the modern! " townships." This map, which was found at the Villa Castello in Florence, is the only one thus far known dating from the period of L>utchJ sovereignty on Manhattan Island. The so-ealled " Duke's plan," preserved in the British Museum J formerly the earliest one known,, appears to b f e r j in fact, only an inferior British copy of the Dutch.]

map '"

FRED L. TAVAHE. 22 Trentham Street, Pendleton, Manchester.

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EARLY LONDON ORPHAN ASYLUM. April, 1917, a London bookseller had f sale an unfamiliar pamphlet :

" London's Charity Inlarged, stilling the orphan's cry, by the liberality of the Parliament, in grant- ing two houses by Act, and giving a thousand pounds towards the work for the employment of the poor and Education of poor children, by S. H., etc., small 4to, pp. 22. London, 1650."

Failing the opportunity of purchasing or\ examining this, I can only infer it refers to j an early form of orphan asylum, and ifrj therefore pre-dates the pamphlet describing " the General Nursery or Colledg of Infants set up by the Justices of Peace " in part of the Corporation Workhouse at ClerkenwelL This pamphlet, small 4to, 16 pp. (including title) was licensed Oct. 13, 1686 r and printed by R. Roberts. I am indebted to Mr. F~ Marcham for sight of the pamphlet and much useful data relating to it. Sir Thomas Rowe was entrusted with the care thereof,, and apparently (Middlesex Sessions Books,. 1689-1709, pp. 13, 66, 74/5, 125, 126, 156, 165) he conveyed Ms estates as security for this trusteeship. Ultimately, the children were removed to Hornsey. In the fact that these two proposals provided for boarding the children gratuitously, they were more than mere charity schools, and * distinct advance upon W. Blake's ' Silver Drops or a Serious Thing,' an account o a Highgate Ladies' School, 1685.

ALECK ABRAHAMS*.