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NOTES AND QUEEIES. \ D* s. xn. NOV. M, UK.

were elected from the demyships on par- ticular counties as vacancies occurred, and Reade's county was Oxfordshire. He gradu- ated as third class in Lit. Hum. in 1835, and was in addition Vinerian Fellow, a university office. JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

THE NATIONAL FLAG (9 th S. xii. 327, 372). I am pleased to see that the Morning Post has joined in a repudiation of a vulgar error to which correspondents of *N. & Q.' have often called attention :

" It is astonishing how few people have any idea of the meaning of flags or of the value ascribed to

them in international relations The depths of

the public ignorance on the subject were made evident after some of our victories in South Africa, when innumerable people displayed the Dutch flag because, according to their ideas, it represented

the 'red, white, and blue.' In the British Navy

an order exists that national flags are not to be used for decorative purposes, and so far is this held to extend that it covers the employment of two signalling flags which, without being actually the French or Dutch tricolour, bear a colourable resem- blance to one or other of those two flags. How sensitive sailors are on such points was evidenced in 1819 in the West Indies. A British frigate 4 dressed ship,' and in so doing placed below some other flag the blue, white, and red tricolour which had been the national flag of France during the Republic and the Empire. A French admiral, Rear-Admiral Duperre, was present, and he com- plained and demanded an apology for an insult to an ensign which had so recently been his country's flag, and one under which he and many of his officers had served. As soon as attention was called to the matter the mistake was rectified and the apology tendered without demur."

I may repeat that not only the Dutch, but also the Russian flag of red, white, and blue, is often ignorantly used as a British patriotic emblem ! T. N. F.

LORENZO DA PAVIA (9 th S. xii. 349). Will you kindly allow me to refer your corre- spondent L. L. K. to my recent work, ' Isabella d'Este,' i. p. 129, (fee., for fuller particulars regarding Lorenzo da Pa via, as well as more exact references to the authorities on this " master of organs," as he was called by his contemporaries 1 Sansovino tells us that Lorenzo made an organ for Matthias Corvinus (Venetia, &c., 1581), but as your correspondent rightly points out, since that monarch died in 1490, the instrument must have been sent to Hungary before the Pavian master left Milan to settle at Venice. I regret that this was not made clear in the paragraph to which he alludes. The exact date of Lorenzo's change of abode is not given by Dr. Carl dell'Acqua, M. Armand Baschet, or Prof. Braghirolli, whose pamphlet 'Lettere inedite di Artisti del Secolo XV.' contains

many interesting particulars regarding this fine artist, but we know that early in 1496 he was already settled in Venice.

JULIA M. ADY.

CUSHIONS ON THE ALTAR (9 th S. xii. 346). There are twenty-one references for altar- cushions in the index to part i. of the new edition of * Hierurgia Anglicana,' Lond., 1902. I saw them in use in the Duomo at Turin last April. The priests came in to say low masses, each preceded by a server in every- day clothes, bearing the missal on a cushion ; I do not remember whether the servers placed the books and cushions on the altars, or whether they handed them to the priest, but certainly the books rested on the cushions during the masses. J. T. F.

Durham.

I think some light might be thrown on this custom in the following works of the late Right Hon. A. J. B. Beresford-Hope, M.P.: 'The English Cathedral of the Nine- teenth Century,' with illustrations, * Worship in the Church of England,' ' Worship and Order.' F. E. R. POLLARD-URQUHART.

Castle Pollard, Westmeath.

Surely MR. GEORGE ANGUS knows that culcita bears the sense of " a padded support." Hence a " cushion," used as a support for a missal, is quite as admissible on the Christian altar as the brazen or wooden " book-rest " which he prefers. Indeed, considering that the ordinary "book-rest" usually is padded, i.e., by a fringed and embroidered cloth or cover (no doubt the survival of something more effective in the way of padding), I am inclined to believe that it really is a "cushion" in the strict intention of the term. FREDERICK WILLIAM KOLFE.

WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH (9 th S. xii. 288). The best and most recent account of this great Minnesinger is found in E. Martin's edi- tion of his life and poetical works (' Parzival ' and 'Titurel'), which appeared in two volumes, especially in the second volume, containing Martin's 'Kommentar.' H. KREBS.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Valet's Tragedy, and other Studies. By Andrew

Lang. (Longmans & Co.)

TASTES and aptitudes alike qualify Mr. Andrew Lang for the position of a new (Edipus. Unfor- tunately, the riddles propounded in modern times are all otherwise difficult than that of the Ethiopian Sphinx, and the result of the application to latter- day mysteries of scientific methods and acute natural