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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vn. OCT. 2. 1020.

CRIMEAN WAR (12 S. vii. 250). The author of 'Letters from Head Quarters ' was the Hon. Somerset John Gough Cal- thorpe, 8th Huesars, who served in the Crimean War as aide-de-camp to Lord Raglan. Ho afterwards became seventh Baron Calthorpe, and died in 1912.

J. H. LESLIE, Lieut. -Col.

NOVELS OF MOTORING (12 S. vii. 208). ' Thomas,' by H. B. Creswell (Nisbet, 1917). Not all on motoring, but it has chapters on it and T.'s motor, " Saucy Susan," crops up all through. The author is a keen motorist. ALFRED S. E. ACKERMANN.

PARISH REGISTERS (12. S i. 29, 78, 93).- The three volumes of the Hertfordshire Parish Registers Marriages, have been in- dexed and Registers with Indexes will shortly be placed in the public library at St. Albans. The ten volumes of the Norfolk Parish Registers Marriages, have been indexed, an$ the Indexes will, in due course, be placed in the public library at Great Yarmouth. WILLIAM DE CASTRE.

THE PREFIX "RIGHT HONBLE." (12 S. vii. 30, 57, 159). It would be interesting if MR. W. G. HARDING would give his au thorities for stating that three Bishops London, Durham, and Winchester are entitled to the pro-fix of "Right Honble." The Bishop of London (as are the two Arch bishops) is a Privy Counsellor ex officio, but in. modern usage he would not be addressed as Right Hon. and Right Reverend, but the Right Reverend the Right Honble. B.

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED. (12 S. vii. 251.)

1. The correct quotation is : What is a Communist ? One who hath yearnings For equal division of xinequal earnings. Idler or bungler, or "both, he is willing To fork out his penny and pocket your shilling.

It comes from Ebenezer Elliott's ' Corn-Law Rhymes ' (1831). CINQVOYS.

4. The lines given by A. C. C. are introduced Ennius's in Cicero's ' De Divinatione,' i. 58, 132 It has been shewn that they belong to the tragedy ' Telamo.' The second line in A. C. C.'s quotation will not scan. The form in Vahlen's edition o Ennius (1903) and C. E. W. Muller's edition o Cicero is : Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab iis drachumam ips

petunt, De his divitiis sibi deducant drachumam, Teddan

cetera.

Cicero quotes the^three preceding lines as well EDWARD BENSLY.

rm

n he Great Fife of London. By Walter George Bell. (John Lane, 11. 5s. net.)

>!R. BELL has once more laid lovers of London

under a heavy obligation. The Great Fire has

ccupied many writers, but a solid history,

Tinging together the most significant details and'

etting the whole scene before us comprehensively

and, one might say, definitively, has so far been

seek. Our author has now provided all that be required by the general reader and that abundantly. And he is, moreover, as copious ind interesting on the subject of the restoration )f the City as he is on its destruction.

Mediaeval London, as is well-known, was a< imber-built city : an ancient one, moreover, in .vhich much of the wood was very tinder. To say nothing of prophecies and plots, a common- sense fear of its burn ing down was fairly prevalent. Sme years before the Fire a Commonwealth Act lad forbidden the building of any houses other }han those of stone and brick, and forbidden, too, 3he over-hanging stories; and about two years be- fore Charles II. had written to the Corporation ex- pressing his fears for the safety of these narrow wooden streets and alleys. It is a wonder that such provisions were not enforced before ; a wonder, too, that so dangerous a City remained immune for so long.

Every student of London knows that the close, dark streets were indescribably foul ; that nests of disease, physical and moral alike, lurked? everywhere behind and around the picturesque greater buildings ; and that the inconvenience of the City for all purposes of intercourse and traffic would have been thought by a modern business man perfectly preposterous.

These considerations, however, go but a little way towards reconciling one to the catastrophe,, and we cannot find ourselves even able to follow Mr. Bell's lead and rejoice in the substitution of Wren's masterpiece for old St. Paul's. Yet the destruction of mediaeval London had a melan- choly sort of appropriateness. The divergence between it and the whole tone of the later seven- teenth century had become wide enough to be jarring.

The description of the progress of the Fire " from Pudding Lane to Pie Corner," and of the behaviour of the people goes very well. Its general course is no doubt well known to our readers. Here and there Mr. Bell gives us a fresh and start- ling picture which sets all tha rest in an enhanced vividness. Thus he tells how to spectators at some distance, owing to the stone reflecting the intense light, " over London, beyond the wall to its farthest extremity, each steeple stood up as a. white lamp above the darker mass of the buildings. Far as the eye reached this illumination of the spires extended, with the visual effect, not of throw- ing them back, but of drawing all in close to- gether." Or take the burning of the Guildhall as seen by Thomas Vincent : " a fearful spectacle, which stood the whole body of it together in view, for several hours together, after the fire had taken it, without flames (I suppose because the timber was such solid oak) in a bright shining.