Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/294

 358 NOTES AND QUERIES. »» s. rv. oor. a, * connexion remains. The FitzAlans, Earls of Arundel, were owners of the manor of Chipping Norton from soon after the Con- quest till the fifteenth century. The " White Hart" is the principal hotel in that town, and has been since 16G6—how much earlier 1 cannot say; but in that year the landlord issued copper tokens current at that period. A rubbing of the one in my possession I enclose. I may add that Diston's Lane remains in the town. B. B. The white horse was the badge of the Earls of Arundel (see ' Sussex Arch. Coll.,' xxiii. 6). It is a curious, but insignificant coincidence that acorns are in the arms of the Harding family (see Parker's 'Glossary of Heraldry'). Edward H. Marshall, M.A. Hastings. If the badge mentioned refers to William FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, it is probably a clerical error, one of the badges of that family (circa 137G-97) being a horse; and Mrs. Bury-Palliser in ' Historic Devices' gives a white horse holding in the mouth a sprig of oak. It afterwards became one of the sup- porters. John Radcliffe. " Pins " (9th S. iv. 287). - The custom of drinking in pin measures, as Mr. Jonas so well explains, was intended to aid sobriety. From preventive it became incentive, so much so that Archbishop Anselm in 1102 had to inveigh against a practice originally meant to ensure moderation. From "let," to hinder, it had become " let," to allow. The pins must have been introduced to check in some measure the immoderate drinking of healths, by limiting the quantity to a gill (Winchester measure) tor each. Abuse soon arose, and the habit took more violent forms. The quantity was restricted, so the healths were multiplied. The original idea, no doubt, was that if each member of a company drank an equal share, the general good sense would Brevail over the one or two excessive thirsts, ut it is easy to see how such prohibition would conduce to excess among determined drinkers. The tankard, with its eight divi- sions, could be refilled at pleasure. Single drinkers would not use the pin-tankard, which was evidently made for a company, where a health would be called for every draught. Perhaps the lonely convivial might drink from something akin to the whistling flagon. The main point seems to be that the single draught was fixed at a gill, in'place of the earlier pint or more. The worst feature of drinking oetween pins was that the draught in most cases was compulsory, and thus the more moderate men were swept into the general excess, and bad and good went under together. Pin measures are no more, but there are limits to the single draught even now. A pint is the large measure for all; for spirits the eighth of a pint. These can be multiplied till the licence is in danger, but the seeming restriction remains. Perhaps present - day regulation and ancient pin measure have one point in common—the pre- vention of suffocation, at least an attainable end. George Marshall. Scfton Park, Liverpool. njisrrllancous NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. French Paintrrx of the Eighteenth Century. By I<ady Dilke. (Bell & Sons.) To her well-known and admirable writings on French art Lady Dilke has added a valuable and scholarly work on the painters of the last century. Her object in its composition has been to supply a want she has herself felt, that of a book furnishing feneral information concerning eighteenth-century Vouch art, and indicating the sources whence further knowledge is to bo derived. Her equip- ment for her task is exemplary. In addition to a familiarity with her subject which few English writers possess, and such not too commonly awarded qualities as taste, insight, and Jiair, she has made a resolute study of French art in home and foreign galleries—including the National Museum of Stock- holm, with its remarkable collection of Oudrys, Bouchers, Lancrets, Paters, Chardins, &<;.—and also has had facilities of personal access to many of the richest private galleries at home and abroad. Among the treasures she has been able to ex- amine and employ are those of the Marquise de Lavalette, the Countess of Yarborough, the Vi- comtesse de Courval. Lord Wantage, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Mr. Alfred de Rothschild, and many others. The result of her labours is a volume of singular interest and beauty, reproducing a hundred or so masterpieces of last-century French art. During the greater part of the present century there has been a tendency in England to depreciate the work of that immediately preceding. It was a part of our own late literary renascence to sacrifice at the shrine of the poetry of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the verse, obviously in- ferior in almost every gift of imagination and ex- pression, of the eighteenth. In our rage of worship of the great and the romantic we were scarcely prepared for a while to allow to the fanciful, the courtly, and the artificial any right to exist. French revolt of the close of the last century exercised a potent influence in this country, where so much of it inspired detestation. Far too vast to be dealt with in a review is the question opened out. In the latter half of this century we have changed our views, and the works of Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Cliardin, Greuze, and other painters or designers are now in highest request. It is to the works of these and other painters that Lady Dilke's book is devoted. It forms the best guide available