Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/370

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[ 2 nd s. NO 18., MAY 3. '56.

letters in every twenty. As a general rule, it should be noticed, that the thinner the paper of which such envelopes are made, the greater the security against their being fraudulently opened. To make a letter quite safe against prying curi- osity, or dishonest fingers, so far as its contents are concerned, there is nothing equal to good seal- ing-wax. Let the wax be well heated, applied under as well as above the lap, worked into an uniform mass, and impressed with a sharply-cut seal ; and I think it will puzzle the most expert at such dirty work, to get at the inside of the letter without leaving some very significant marks.

N. H. L. R.

In the Strand, two doors west of Temple Bar, on the north side, the metallic capsule envelopes were sold a few months ago ; they were arranged in the window, and plenty of persons were " sow- ing gape seed" at them. ANON.

Hydrophobia Patients Smothered (1 st S. v. 10. ; vi. 206. 298. 438.) Several communications have appeared in " N. & Q." to ascertain whether in cases of decided hydrophobia the patients were ever put to death by smothering or otherwise, or whether such opinion were a mere popular de- lusion. That death by suffocation has been prac- tised formerly, history affords us many precedents, not to mention the instance of Edward V. and his brother ; and the procuring of death as a ter- mination of the sufferings of a miserable case, is thus described in the London Magazine for 1738, p. 44. :

" One Brounsell, a labourer, who had been bitten by a mad dog, was directly sent to be dipped in the salt water, and returned to Bedford ; when the bite healed up, and he was to all appearance well, but he was afterwards taken ill on a Friday, and the Saturday was raving mad, barking and howling like a dog, and biting at every- thing in his way. He had intervals that he was sensible, when he desired to be tied down to the bed to prevent his doing mischief; and begged not to be smothered, as people are in his unhappy case, but desired to be bled to death. Accordingly on Saturday night he had a vein opened by a surgeon of that place, and bled till Sunday morning, when he expired in that miserable condition."

F.

Construction of Quadrants (2 nd S. i. 175.) DR. TUCKER will find an account of Sutton's and Collins's quadrants in Dr. Brewster's Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, art. " Quadrants," and also draw- ings of the same. There are also, I believe, old, and now scarce, pamphlets descriptive of the above instruments. N. S. HEINEKEN.

Sidmouth.

Sir Henry Gould, Knt. (2 nd S. i. 295.) Have you not attributed to the justice of the Common Pleas, who died in 1794, the paternity that be- longs to his namesake, the judge of the King's Beach, who died in 1710 ? The first of the four

wives of Lieutenant-General Fielding, who died in 1740, was Sarah, the daughter of the judge of King's Bench, and their son was the author of Tom Jones, &c. The judge of the Common Pleas was of Stapleford Abbotts, Essex, and left two daughters, one married to the Hon. Temple Luttrell, and the other to the Earl of Cavan. (See Brydges's Collins's Peerage, iii. 277., and Gent. Mag. Ixiv. 283.) On the announcement of the death of Admiral Sir Davidge Gould in 1847, the St. James's Chronicle says he was the last male descendant of the ancient Somersetshire family of Gould, which enumerated two distinguished judges among its members. Does the pedigree in Phelps's Somersetshire show in what relationship they stood to each other ? EDWARD Foss.

[On turning again to Phelps's Somersetshire, it is clear we have confused the two chief-justices. According to the pedigree, Sir Henry Gould of the Common Pleas was the son of Sir Henry of the King's Bench, and conse- quently uncle of Henry Fielding the novelist.]

Greek Fire (2 nd S. i. 316.) Your corre- spondent T. LAMPRAY will find some account of the " invention and use of the Greek fire " in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. x. pp. 14. 18., edit. 1839. E. C. HARINGTON. The Close, Exeter.

English Orders (2 nd S. i. 290.) MR. FRASER seems to have mistaken the meaning of the author of The Origin and Developments of Anglicanism, who does not admit the validity of Anglican Orders, nor touch that point at all, but confines himself in the passages adduced to the question of mission or jurisdiction. When that author ob- serves that " Orders were indeed perpetuated," he speaks not of the present Anglican clergy, but of those Catholic priests who had been ordained before they became Protestants. Thus he asks, " When they apostatised, did this mission last?" And he answers, "Obviously not." He is evi- dently not speaking of their orders being per- petuated in successive Anglican clergy, but of their own individual sacramental character of priests remaining indelible in them.

MR. FRASER, therefore, is not correct in pre- suming that our controversialists hold the Anglican orders to be valid, though irregular. And as he desires to be " enlightened upon these points, strictly as matters of fact," I beg to assure him that the practical conclusion of Catholics is, that such orders are invalid; and in conformity with this, every Anglican clergyman who enters the sacred ministry in the C:\tholic Church is reor- dained ; and this not conditionally, as if the matter were doubtful, but absolutely, as a mere layman.

F. C. HUSENBETH, D.D.

Dr. Samuel Barnard and Archbishop Abbot (2 nJ S. i. 123,) In reply to MR. STEINMAN'S