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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 h S. X. SEPT. 6, 1902.

The h in "habit," "habitual," as in "history," "historical," is aspirated, and no one in Britain north of the English Tyne would think of dropping it, and therefore no diffi- culty or want of euphony is found in saying "a habit " or "a habitual." When at school I was taught that the vowels were "a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes w and y," whatever this may nowadays mean. R. B R.

South Shields.

[We have always used an before words of four syllables, such as historical, heroical, habitual, in which the accent falls on the antepenultimate.]

LEGEND OF LADY ALICE LEA (9 th S. x. 68, 138). I am obliged to MR. BOBBINS and ST. SWITHIN for their replies to my query, but having neither the earlier volumes of ' N. & Q.' nor 'Choice Notes from "N. & Q.'" ('Folk- lore ') to refer to, I am no wiser than before.

D. K. T.

"DIFFERENT THAN" (9 th S. x. 128). May I be permitted to refer YOUNGSTER to an article with this heading which I contributed to 'N. & Q.' at the beginning of 1898 (9 th S. i. 3)? To the examples there adduced I would add the following choice relic of antiquity bequeathed to us in 1634 by the dramatist John Ford ('Perkin Warbeck,' III. iv.) :

It is the surest policy in princes To govern well their own than seek encroachment. Perhaps Ford had in mind the ellipsis of potius before quam with which we are familiar in Latin, but even on that hypothesis the English is none the less barbarous. I have nothing further to say, except that the mis- use of than is increasing in frequency.

F. ADAMS.

115, Albany Road, Camberwell.

DRAGON TREE (9 th S. ix. 369, 411). In reference to that most instructive work entitled 'The Child's Guide to Knowledge,' I forward for the information of TYRONE the address of a friend who possesses a copy, and who will no doubt give him all infor- mation regarding it: L. L. Prichard, M.R.C.S. &c., Millbrook Cottage, Millbrook, Jersey.

THALASSA.

THE MITRE (9 th S. viii. 324, 493, 531 ix 174 334, 397, 496).-lf LORD ALDENHAM will read my note at viii. 532 he will doubtless recognize that the writer was merely an inquirer to whom no special source of in- formation was available, and if his lordship out of his unrivalled knowledge of eccle- siastical lore, will categorically answer the inquiries put by me, he will be contri- buting towards what so many minds feel

so acutely at the present juncture to be the one thing needful in Church reform, viz., the simplification of religion and everything con- nected with religion into its primitive and essential elements. The question whether the Apostles or any of their immediate successors used vestments or wore mitres is not open to much argument, as, if they did use these things, incidental, if not direct mention would have been made of the practice in the Acts of the Apostles, or in the Pauline Epistles, or in the literature of the early Church, more especially if these ornaments were in any way considered essential, and surely the absence of any reference to them in contemporary history is primd facie evidence that they had not been then brought into existence. There is to my mind something painfully grotesque in the notion that the humble fishermen of Galilee ever enshrouded their limbs in embroidered copes, and wore linen or metal mitres on their heads ; and I submit that the burden of proof that they did so rests with those who allege that they did rather than with those who deny the allegation.

F. DE H. L.

HUNTER STREET, BRUNSWICK SQUARE (9 th S. vi. 285, 378). As every one knows who has read Ruskin's ' Prseterita,' Ruskin was born at No. 54, Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, in 1819. In his own words :

"As days went on he [Ruskin's father] was able to take a house in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, No. 54 (the windows of it, fortunately for me, commanded a view of a marvellous iron post out of which the water-carts were filled through beau- tiful little trap-doors, by pipes like boa-con- strictors ; and I was never weary of contemplating that mystery and the delicious dripping con- sequent) " ;

and he further describes himself as " counting the bricks in the opposite houses, with rapturous intervals of excitement, during the filling of the water-cart through its leathern pipe, from the dripping iron post at the pavement edge ; or the still more admirable proceedings of the turncock, when he turned and turned till a fountain sprang

up in the middle of the street Contented by

help of these occasional glimpses of the rivers of Paradise, I lived until I was more than four years old in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, the greater part of the year, for a few weeks in the summer breathing country air by taking lodgings

in small cottages either about Hampstead or at

Dulwich at Mrs. Ridley's but my chief remain- ing impressions of those days are attached to Hunter Street."

The lease of the house endeared to Ruskin by so many childish recollections having expired, the house, which is the property of the Foundling Hospital, is in course of being renovated in order to bring it up to date.