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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. i. APRIL ie, i*.

We could give many similar instances were it necessary. Mr. Christy's book has reached a second edition. It may possibly reach a third. We will give him a characteristic Russian proverb that is worth quoting. It gives the experience of a country familiar with heat, and is to the effect that "Heat breaks no bones," the lesson, of course, being that it is better to endure heat than risk cold.

Catalogue Codicum Manuscriptorum Bibliothecte BodleiancK, Partis Quintse Fasciculus Quartus. Confecit Gulielmus D. Macray. (Oxford, Claren- don Press.)

MB. MACRAY has been engaged for many years in cataloguing the great collection of manuscripts gathered together by Dr. Richard Rawlinson, which is preserved in the Bodleian Library. It has been said of Strype, the ecclesiastical historian, that although we owe him much for his labours among forgotten records, yet that ' ' in his estima- tion one old manuscript appears to have been about as good as another." This may well be applied to Dr. Rawlinson. At a time when manuscripts were little regarded and historical treasures were perish- ing daily, he devoted his money, time, and energies to the work of collection. It would not be easy to exaggerate the benefit he has conferred on posterity. He has preserved much of high importance which we may oe sure would have been lost had it not been for his devotion, but with the true instinct of a collector he seems to have given house-room to nearly every written paper which came in his way. It is impossible to say what may be of interest to future generations, but so far as we can tell now many of Rawlinson's gatherings catalogued in this volume are of very secondary value. Seventeenth and eighteenth century sermons are not commonly interesting, and of these we have a great number, accompanied by essays and treatises on points of theological controversy which have happily burnt themselves out long ago ; but even on these sub- jects, though there is much chaff, there is some good grain. Notwithstanding the late Mr. Lath- bury's work, the history of the Nonjurors has still to be written, and the student will find here much that will be of service to him. We are glad to find that among his gatherings Rawlinson has preserved a book of swan-marks. It relates to the river Thames, and contains three hundred and fifteen marks. We trust that some one may be induced to publish it. The drawings ought to be reproduced by some photographic process. Rolls and books of swan- marks exist in public repositories and a few in private hands. They are very interesting. Though seldom heraldic in any true sense, they bear a certain analogy to heraldry, and were certainly hereditary. The story that has been referred to more than once in our pages of a dog carrying away the Host in a church in York has a parallel in a certificate found in one of the volumes of miscellanies. It appears that at Tadlow, in Cambridgeshire, on Christmas Day, 1638, a dog ran off with the bread prepared for the Holy Communion. The accident is attributed to the church not being provided with altar- rails. In a book of collections made by a Rev. Thomas Delafield there are some notes on charms which may not improbably be of interest to folk- lorists ; among them is one in French and English, which we are told had touched the heads of the Three Kings of Cologne. It was found in the pocket of a smuggler who was condemned in 1749

for the murder of a Custom-house officer. We think, but are not sure, there is some mention of this charm in a volume of the Gentleman'* Magazine issued at about the date of the murder. The omni- vorous character of Rawlinson's collections is shown by the fact that the Doctor, among other things, was before his time in that he made a gathering o! children's samplers. There are twenty-six of them. They were humorously labelled by their owner " Works of Learned Ladies." Mr. Macray has com- piled his account of them from a careful description drawn up some years ago by the late Mrs. Foulkea, which is preserved along with them. The earliest dated example is 1695, but there are three others which from their position in the catalogue are, we may assume, of an earlier period.

WE hear with regret of the death, at her resi- dence, Camden Lawn, Claughton Road, Birken- head, of Mrs. James Ganilin, known to readers of ' N. & Q.' as Hilda Gamlin, the historian of Birken- head. Mrs. Gamlin, whose husband was a councillor at Birkenhead, was a Miss Furness, of Claughton. She died on the 2nd inst., in her fifty-fifth year. Her best-known works were 'Memoirs of Emma, Lady Hamilton,' and ' George Romney and his Art.' She also wrote 'Memories of Birkenhead' and ' 'Twixt Mersey and Dee.' Her remains were interred on the 5th inst. in the Flaybrick Hill Cemetery. Up to the close her interest in ' N. & Q.' was maintained.

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