Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/168

 134 NOTES AND QUERIES. [i 2 s.ix.Auo.i3,i92i. Great College Street, Westminster, where she died in 1797, survived by her son' Benjamin and her daughter Ann. One of! her bequests is to Thos. Holt, apothecary. Will, 583 Exeter. J. C. WHITEBBOOK. 24, Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, W.C.2. BAPTISM OP INFANT ON ITS MOTHER'S COFFIN (12 S. vii. 490). This custom still obtains in Sutherland. The wife of my gamekeeper died there shortly after the , birth of her child, and her husband told me that the baby was to be baptized on the ' coffin or that the bowl for baptism was to be placed on the coffin ; 1 am not quite sure which, and, in the mournful circumstances, did not like to make any inquiries savouring of curiosity of the bereaved husband. A. R. EMERSON'S 'ENGLISH TRAITS' (12 S. v. 234 ; vi. 9). No. 4, at the first reference. Alfieri thought Italy and England the only countries worth living in. This, as MR. FLETCHER suggests, was taken from the Autobiography. Emerson's acknowledged ^preference for English translations makes it probable that he used C. Edwards Lester's, published at New York in 1845. See ' Period Third,' chap. vi. : In fact, after much travelling and observation, the only two European countries I have left with a desire to see again are England and Italy. In the former, art has conquered and transformed nature ; in the latter nature has always robustly struggled in a thousand different ways to take vengeance on her often unhappy, and always in- operative governments. He writes in the same chapter : From that time I felt a desire to live always in England. Not that I liked Englishmen indivi- dually very much (although decidedly more than Frenchmen, being better men), but the situation of the country, its simple customs, its beautiful and modest women and girls, and, above all, its liberty made me entirely forget the unpleasantness of the climate, the melancholy that always hoops you up there, and the outrageous cost of living. Earlier in the same chapter, after speaking of the prosperity of England, he had said : All these substantial and solid advantages, so peculiar to that free and happy country, en- raptured my mind at first sight, and during two subsequent visits I never had occasion to change my opinion. But in the description of the visit which he made to London with the Countess of Albany in the spring of 1791 (' Period Fourth," chap, xxi.) his praise has become decidedly fainter : I had still some admiration for the government, but the climate and the artificial manner of life I found more intolerable than ever always at the table out of bed till two or three in the morning a life at war with letters, genius, and health. I began to feel once more twinges of the gout, which in that blessed Island is absolutely indigenous, and when the first novelty was over the Countess was anxious to quit the country. No. 8, at the second reference. MR. FLETCHER asks whether Romilly ever sug- gested, as an expedient for clearing the arrears of ^business in Chancery, the Chan- cellor's staying away entirely from his Court. Emerson, apparently, was thinking of a passage in Sir Samuel Romilly's ' Memoirs/ 1840, vol. ii., p. 421, where he writes in the Diary of his Parliamentary Life, under Nov. 28, 1811 : The Lord Chancellor has, in the course of this Michaelmas Term, been prevented from attending the Court for above a week by ill health. His place was supplied as usual by the Master of the Bolls, who heard so many causes and made such progress in the Chancellor's paper, that. . . he discontinued his sitting, in order to give the parties in the remaining causes time enough to prepare themselves to have their causes heard. If. among the expedients which have been thought of for clearing the present arrear of business, one should suggest that of the Chancellor's staying away entirely from his Court, it would be con- sidered as a jest. The truth, however, is that this would be so effectual an expedient, that, if the Lord Chancellor were only confined to his room by illness for two successive terms, there is no doubt that all the arrear of business, except the Bankrupt and Lunatic Petitions, and the Appeals (which the Master of the Bolls cannot hear), would be entirely got rid of. In another place, when mentioning Mr. M. A. Taylor's motion in the House of Com- mons for the 'appointment of a committee to inquire into the state of the appeals in the House of Lords, and of causes in the Court of Chancery, he notes : I said of the Chancellor all the good that can be said of him, and I only hinted at his defects. I observed of him, that, in point of learning in every part of his profession, and in talents, he had hardly been surpassed by any of his predecessors ; and that, in anxiety to do justice to the suitors of his Court, he had perhaps never been equalled ; that he carried this merit to an excess, and that his fault Was over anxiety to do justice in each particular case, without * considering how many other causes are waiting to be decided. The Chancellor was Lord Eldon. EDWARD BENSLY. PRINCESS ELIZABETH, " REFINED INTRI- GANTE " (12 S. ix. 51). One version~of this lady's story is given by J. H. Castera in his ' Histoire de Catherine II.,' livre sixieme, vol. ii., pp. 79-90, in the 1808 (Paris) edition. See also the section ' La Princesse Russe,*