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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. x. SEPT. is, 1902.

to recognize " the fighting parson," Sir Henry Bate Dudley. Many of these mistakes are trivial. I hey would be unworthy of mention were it not that they are indicative of a sort of inexactitude that we regret in one who found* on caricatures and satires a wholesale arraignment of England. M. Filon is, in fact, hurt with the things that our caricaturists published concerning Prance. Me demands of himself " ce que penseraient les Anglais d'un de nos caricaturistes qui traiterait aujourd hui leur roi comme John Leech a trait6 nos souverams. The answer to such self-communing has been given of late. The work of M. Filon is written for French- men, and will doubtless be acceptable to them. It will do nothing to bring about a better understanding between two countries, but is rather calculated, by taking as outbursts of national rancour what had no such significance, to cause further misunder- standing and mistrust.

The Reader's Handbook.. By the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. A New Edition, revised. (Chatto & Windus.)

THE present edition of Brewer's ' Reader's Hand- book professes to be revised by the authors daughter, Mrs. Nellie Cobham Hayman. The task of revision cannot have been arduous, since the number of pages and lines in the body of the book, in this and in the previous edition, is all but identical, and slight inaccuracies of cataloguing are repeated. Under ' Adbaldar ' .thus appears in both editions with a wrong reference the Abdaldar of Southey's ' Thalaba the Destroyer.' On the other hand, the appendixes, which constituted the weakest and least satisfactory portion of the previous issue, are now omitted, with a great gain to space, and the book is at once more portable and more trustworthy. Readers of ' N. & Q., from whose pages much of the information is gleaned, are in a position to estimate aright the claims of the work.

Devon Notes and Queries: a Quarterly Journal devoted to the Local History, Biography, and Antiquities of the County of Devon. Edited by P. F. S. Amery, John S. Amery. and J. Brooking Rowe. July. (Exeter, Commin.) THE people of Devonshire, though like the rest of us they have permitted much wanton destruction, have always taken a far deeper interest in the past of their county than some of their neighbours, and as a consequence their Notes and Queries, a quarterly publication devoted to Devonshire his- tory, in the wide sense of the term, is a well- written and interesting journal. Mr. G. L. Boundy contributes a good paper on the water-sellers of Exeter, accompanied by a portrait of "Billy" Wotton, one of the last of these old worthies, holding in his hand a vessel which we surmise contained something more potent than the fluid he vended. Before the establishment of the Exeter Water Company, the date of which is not a remote one, worn-out old men and women got their living by selling water for washing, not for drinking purposes; this they carried round in casks mounted on second- hand wheels, and drawn by an ass or a decrepit horse. Exeter may have been the last place of importance where this primitive trade nourished, but we have no evidence that it was so. Mr. J. Hambley Rowe's article on the word silver in place-names, though he has come to no definite conclusion, is useful, because it draws attention to

the subject, and furnishes names of which silver Forms a part which are commonly forgotten. Mr. Oswald J. Reichel writes on the same subject. As an appendix, Mr. Crossing's two useful works on the crosses of Dartmoor and its borderland are being given in a revised and combined form. We cordially approve of the arrangement, but, when finished, we trust the sheets will also be issued in an independent volume.

OUR ingenious contributor Mr. Alfred F. Robbins read before the Institute of Journalists, at the Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, on the 3rd inst., a paper on ' Shakspeare as a Journalist,' which applied nappily to modern conditions many quotations from the dramas.

MR. W. F. DAWSON has written a work entitled 'Christmas: its Origin and Associations.' It will present a comprehensive and systematic history of the festival, arranged chronologically, showing how it has been observed and celebrated from the first century to the present day. It will be issued by Mr. Elliot Stock.

'NOTES AND QUERIKS' FOR SALE (9 th S. vii. 387,

520; viii. 76; ix. 60, 300). On 16 August I saw in a bookseller's shop in Hastings the First Series of ' N. & Q.' from 3 November, 1849, to 29 December, 1855 in twelve volumes, complete, except that the index to vol. i. is wanting, price 2Z. W. S.

to

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STEER-HOPE.

To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new is the last line of Milton's ' Lycidas.' Ignorance has sometimes written " Fresh fields and pastures new."

CORRIGENDUM. 9 th S. ix. 515, col. 1, 1. 37, for " 6 th S." read 9 th S.

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