Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/188

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NOTES AND QUERIES. m* s. v. MAKCH 3, 1900.

and other modern extravagances of pious faddists. Nor has he any patience with the racing speed with which the officiant hurries through the service, supposing it to be good form because Newman is said to have set that fashion. Indeed, not once nor twice Dr. Legg points out, with evident relish, the limitations and ignorances of that in- fluential divine, to whose ipse dixit too much deference has been given. In defending the Anglican Church from hasty charges of Erastianism, the editor brings into prominence the significance of the king being anointed at his coronation, he being thereby consecrated to ecclesiastical functions and invested with spiritual jurisdiction, almost in the same way as a bishop. The proper term, he maintains, for this legitimate kingly authority in the Church is Regalism, as distinct from Eras- tianism. Mr. Cuthbert Atchley contributes a learned paper, with no lack of historical illustra- tions, on ' The Ceremonial Use of Lights.' We fail to apprehend his meaning when he says that formerly " in the vast majority of cases this sacra- ment [baptism] was administered by the roadside, so that there were no lights at all" (p. 25). The remaining essay on 'The English Altar and its Surroundings ' is characterized by good sense and also by an English feeling on Church matters, which, indeed, predominates throughout the book, and is a welcome feature in these days of Romanizing manuals.

By

(Kirkwall,

A Shetland Minister in the Eighteenth Century.

Rev. John Willcock, B.D., Lerwick.

Leonards.)

THIS life of the Rev. John Mill is by the same author to whom is owing the life of that maddest of Scottish heroes and coxcombs, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie (see 9 th S. iv. 449). A certain antiquarian interest attends the proceedings of this worthy. His claims, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, to cast out devils, and his treatment generally of demons, for whom he had a wonderful flair, give the book a certain interest. Mill represents, however, the most perverse, joyless, and repellent form of Presby- terianism, and is a singularly unamiable, acrid, and unsympathetic personage. A stern and Pharisaical condemner of others, he seems capable of language almost as bad as that he condemns. He describes in the course of a sea- voyage how "the hellish blasphemies of the cursed tars damning one another

Eut me in greater fear than the danger we were i." Another time he says concerning his adver- sary, whom, however, he alleges to be Satan, holding possession of a woman : " I called him (as indeed he was) a damned rascal for his impudence." One story (p. 95) concerning a tailor in Channer- wick, who made a suit of clothes for the devil, is very curious, and probably, as our author says, unique. The Rev. John Mill detected the fiend, though disguised as "a very respectable-looking gentleman, and compelled him to sweep out of the house "in a cloud of blue sulphurous flame." Perhaps the most graphic picture in the book is that of " the strange distemper called Influenza," which in 1782 was raging through Britain. A not hopelessly unpalatable remedy for that complaint is given, but our faith in it is not great enough to induce us to burden our pages with it. We are not surprised that our hero's daughters turned out none too well, or that children "fled at the first sight of him." We have, indeed, been shown few personages

in history or fiction to whom we are less drawn than we are to the Lerwick minister, in whose career as depicted we fail to find many humanizing traits.

THE REV. WILLIAM LEE (60, Farleigh Road, Stoke Newington) writes that as evidence of the wide circulation of ' N. & Q.' he has to thank corre- spondents in various parts of the world for their communications respecting 'The Bibliography of lobacco.' He regrets that, owing to illness and other causes, there has been delay in completing the bibliography. It is, however, now almost ready for the press, and he will be pleased to hear from gentlemen who may have any suggestions to offer as to making the work as complete as possible.

MR. W. D. PINK has reprinted from the Leigh Chronicle of 2 February a descriptive article on the Leigh coat of arms, which will be of much interest to genealogists.

WE learn with much regret of the death, at the age of sixty- two, of Mr. Andrew White Tuer, F.S.A., a frequent contributor to our columns. Mr. Tuer was responsible for ' Bartolozzi and his Works,' ' The History of the Horn Book,' ' The Follies and Fashions of our Grandfathers,' * London Cries,' and many books of antiquarian interest. He was for some years on the committee of the Ex-Libris Society, and was best known in con- nexion with the Leadenhall Press, of which he was the presiding spirit.

to ftatrngaribtnt*.

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CORRIGENDA. P. 93, col. 1, 1. 3 from bottom, for "458" read 418; p. 129, col. 2, 1. 26 from bottom, for "trestons" read trestous ; p. 130, col. 1, 1. 18 from bottom, for " modern" read wooden. NOTICE.

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