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NOTES AND QUERIES. [9* s. m. MAY 27, m

tunity of obtaining the information he re- quires ] EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

PREEN, SALOP (9 th S. iii. 259). In your review of the 'History of Church Preen,' by the late Mr. Arthur Sparrow, it is stated that the origin of the name has been a puzzle, and that Prof. Earle hazards the guess that it may stand for (cet) pirian, " (at the) pear(-tree)." In Domesday, and in the thirteenth century, it appears as Prene. I suggest that it is Welsh pren, a tree. Welsh place-names are plentiful in Salop. Frees, four and a half miles south-east of Whitchurch, is Welsh pres, a thicket. W. H. DUIGNAN.

Walsall.

NONJURORS (9 th S. ii. 408, 493 ; iii. 56, 178). An account of the " French Prophets " will be found in Eadie's ' Ecclesiastical Diction- ary ' (third edition, Griffin, 1862), pp. 288-9. They are also briefly noticed in the 'Popular Cyclopaedia,' art. 'Prophets,' near the end. See also John Wesley's * Journal' for 28 Feb., 1739, 22 June, 1739, and 3 April, 1786. Charles Wesley's 'Journal' for 11 Dec., 1739, likewise alludes to them. Both the Wesleys seem to have had some experience of the curious im- posture, and the account given by John Wesley in the first passage referred to is of special interest. C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A.

Bath.

CHARLES I.'s RINGS (9 th S. ii. 448 ; iii. 174). Dr. C. E. D. Fortnum, F.S.A., who died quite recently, presented to the Queen in 1887 the diamond signet ring engraved by order of Charles I. for Queen Henrietta Maria. FREDERICK LAWRENCE TAVAE.E.

30, Rusholme Grove, Rusholme, Manchester.

"Hoo " (9 th S. iii. 245). This in Derbyshire is how, with a very broad sound. It reminds me of some lines heard many years ago: How runs soo quick, how leaps soo heigh, How seyms as if how nient tow fly !

THOS. RATCLIFFE. Worksop.

' OLD ST. PAUL'S' (9 th S. iii. 186, 271, 331). Any of your readers who care to see a repro- duction of Pickersgill's portrait of William Harrison Ainsworth will find one, '' from a photograph by R. H. Mercer," prefixed to the account of the author by Mr. Edmund Mercer forming pp. 1-27 of the 1896 volume of the Proceedings of the Manchester Literary Club, of which I am proud to be a member. The original painting is not now in the librarian's room at the Chetham College, but is loaned by the feoffees to the Free

Library Committee of the city of Manchester and is placed in a good position at the top ol the stairs of the Reference Library in King Street. The picture was exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1841. Laman Blanchard says of it :

" Ainsworth is there depicted not as some pale, worn, pining scholar some fagging, half-exhausted periodical romancer but as an English gentleman of goodly stature and well-set limbs, with a fine head on his shoulders and a heart to match."

"The latter, however," says my friend Mercer, " is not shown in the picture."

T. CANN HUGHES, M.A. Lancaster.

Referring to this subject, may I draw attention to the portrait of the author of ' Crichton ' (one of the literary delights of my boyhood) in ' A Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters, 1830-1838' (London, Chatto & Windus, 1873), and William Maginn's remarks thereon ?

"We have not the pleasure of being acquainted with Mrs. Ainsworth, but we are sincerely sorry for her. You see what a pretty fellow the young j novelist of the season is, how exactly, in fact, he resembles one of the most classically handsome and [ brilliant of the established lady-killers, the only darling of the day, except Cradock, alias Caradoc, whose charms liave been equally fatal among the nymphs of the Seine and the Thames."

HENRY GERALD HOPE.

Clapham, S.W.

ANCIENT BEE-LORE (9 th S. iii. 286). An artisan whom I met on the rail, whom I put down as a Northumberland man, and who had pretty freely expressed his annoyance at the delay caused by the gate-money race traffic, concluded as he was about to leave the train, " It wouldn't do to swear before the bees, though. They 'd pretty soon leave the place ! " THOMAS J. JEAKES.

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

A Stilly of Wagner. By Ernest Newman. (Dobell.) MR. NEWMAN'S ' Study of Wagner' is almost, if not quite, unique in its way. It is an attempt on the \ part of an avowed, if a judicious, admirer to free Wagner from the evil influences of enthusiastic and ignorant partisans, and to set him in his true light before the public. Besides being an intelligent, , subtle, and profound critic of music as we have said in speaking of his earlier work, ' Gluck and the Opera' (see 8 th S. ix. 119) Mr. Newman is a darmj; innovator. After raising Gluck to a pedestal higher than has been accorded him, he all but dethrones Wagner, and quite dethrones him from the position assigned him by injudicious worshippers. Wagner, on the intellectual side, is not to be taken so seriously as his admirers would like him to be, I