Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/359

 2 nd S. N 18., MAY 3. '56.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

351

Pardon us James, who must to Thee declare

'Twas Loyal Zeal made us presume thus far,

We ne're'were Poets upon Oliver."

No. 1163. of the Collection of Proclamations, $fc., presented to the Chetham Library, Man- chester, by James O. Halliwell, Esq., F.R.S.

BlBLlOTHECAR. CHETHAM.

Proclamation issued by King Charles /., on the occasion of his having concluded a Treaty of Peace with Spain in 1630. This may at the present moment be perused with pleasure by many of the readers of " N. &. Q." HENRY KENSINGTON.

" By the King.

"Whereas it is found meete and expedient, upon weighty considerations moued to His Majestie, by the in- tervention of some of His Friends, to lay aside hostility with the King of Spaine, and so to remooue by faire and peaceable means the cause of the Warre, which hath bred interruption to the Amity betwixt the two Crownes, upon assurance given His Majestie hereof by that King. His most Excellent Majestie hath condescended to renew the ancient Amity and good intelligence betwixt y e two Crowns, their Realmes, Countreys, Dominions, Vassals, and Subjects ; And doeth accordingly make knowen to all His louing people, that the sayd Peace and Friendship being so established, not onely all Hostilitie and Warre is to cease on both sides from henceforward, But also the former Trade and Commerce, as it stoode in the vse and observance of the Treatie, made by His Majestie's blessed Father, is restored and confirmed betweene the sayd Kings, their Kingdomes, Territories, and Subjects, as well by Land as Sea and Fresh-waters. "" Which His Majestie hath thought fit to declare unto all manner of his Subjects, of whatsoever estate they be, strictly charging and commanding them to obserue and accomplish all that hereunto belongeth, As it is certainly promised to be published on the side of the King of Spaine, the Date of these Presents.

" Giuen at His Majesties Palace of Westminster,

the fifth day of December, in the sixt yeere

of His Majisties Reigne. " God Save the King."

Invention of Postage Stamps.

" The invention of postage stamps is generally ascribed to the English, and certainly they were first brought into use in England in 1839. But a Stockholm paper, The Fryskitten, says that so far back as 1823, a Swedish officer, Lieut. Trekenber, of the artillery, petitioned the Chamber of Nobles to propose to the government to issue stamped paper specially destined to serve for envelopes for prepaid letters. The fact, it adds, is duly recorded in the minutes of the Chamber under date of the 23rd March, 1823. The proposition was warmly supported by Count de Schwerin, on the ground that it would be both convenient to the public and the Post Office, but it was rejected by a large majority." Galignani, April 28, 1856.

W. TV.

Malta.

Wordsworth v. Campbell. Reading the other day the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers, I was sur- prised by a note of the editor, asserting that

Wordsworth declared the lines in Campbell's

Pleasures of Hope,

" Where Andes, giant of the western star, With meteor-standard to the winds unfurl'd, Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world,"

to be sheer nonsense ; and that he asks " What has a giant to do with a star ? and what is a meteor- standard ? " And adding that Professor Wilson, though avowing his admiration of the " splendid " passage, swore that he could not tell what it meant.

Surely both Wordsworth and Wilson were ig- norant of geography, or they would have known that the Andes were the giant mountains of the western world ; and that Cotopaxi, one of their highest peaks, being a volcano, might poetically be said to unfurl its meteor-standard to the winds.

It is evident that Wilson appreciated the beauty of the passage, though he would not trouble him- self to explain it ; and the criticism of Words- worth is what might have been expected from a poet of his peculiar style. M. E. F.

Surgical Operations under Chloroform, 8fc. Has the following passage been " noted " in your pages ? If not, it would be curious to non-medical readers, like myself, to know whether opium, or what is supposed to have been made use of more than two hundred years ago by the " old surgeons," " who, ere they show their art, cast one asleep, then cut the diseas'd part," &c. ; and whether the use of ether, and subsequently of chloroform, in surgical operations, is merely a revival in these enlightened days of some heretofore forgotten practice of the " dark ages," or whether it is really something new ?

Women beware Women, tragedy, by Thos. Mid- dleton, first printed 1657, Act IV. Sc. 1.:

" Hippolito. Yes, my lord, I make no doubt, as I shall take the course, Which she shall never know till it be acted ; And, when she wakes to honour, then she'll thank me for't. Til imitate the pities of old surgeons To this lost limb ; who, ere they show their art, Cast one asleep, then cut the diseas'd part ; So, out of love to her I pity most, She shall not feel him going till he's lost ; Then she'll commend the cure."

S. H. H.

The last Gibbet in England. As "K & Q." will be a work of reference hereafter, may not the following notice, which appeared in a recent num- ber of The Examiner, claim a remembrance ?

" A few days ago, the last gibbet erected in England was demolished by the workmen employed in making the extensive docks for the North Eastern Railway Com- pany, upon Jarrow Stoke, on the Tyne."

Malta.

A Slavian (Glagalif) Copy of " Bcnefaium Christi, 1563" (I 5t S. x. 384. 406. 447. ; xii. 75.) Ranke and Mr. Macaulay said that there