Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/405

 9s. V.MAY 19, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

397

Minster (forty miles away) may occasionally be seen. Until a comparatively recent period it was very wild land, covered with gorse, brambles, and thorns, as, indeed, were its neighbours Wood Hill, Parson Hill, Cotcher Hill, and "The Standard." These all lie within the parish of Hickling, and "As rough as Hickling gorse " is still a local proverb.

C. C. B.

EXTENT OF ST. MARTIN'S PARISH. Horace Walpole, writing to Mann in 1776, says :

" I think I have heard of such a form in law as such an one of the parish of St. Martin's-in-the- Fields in Asia ; St. Martin's parish literally reaches now to the other end of the globe."

What does this mean 1 H. T. B.

ST. FRANCIS OF ASSIST. In a triptych recently presented to the Aberdeen Art Gal- lery there is a figure of this saint, in which he is distinctly shown as six-toed, and, not quite so distinctly, as six-fingered. Is there any authority for this 1 ? Or could it have been that the person who commissioned the triptych had the peculiarity 1 The triptych is small, belongs to the Tuscan School, arid is apparently of the middle of the fifteenth century. J. D. W.

Savile Club.

" ATLANTIC GREYHOUND." The first use of this term is worth noting :

"The Alaska, of the Guion fleet, starting her career in 1882, was the first vessel that reduced the passage below seven days, in June of that year, and she was also the first to which the title of ' Atlantic greyhound' was applied." Quarterly Review for January, 1900, p. 83, art. ' Ocean Liners.'

Is it known who actually originated the expression ? A. C. W.

REYNOLDS'S 'INFANT ACADEMY.' In what year, and for whom, was this picture painted ?

H. T. B.

'PUNCH' WEEKLY DINNER. Was not this at one time, and for how long, held at an inn I think "The Tavistock " in Covent Garden? Was it started there by Mark Lemon, and afterwards continued at Bouverie Street, or vice versa ? D. M.

[See Mr. Spielmann's ' History of Punch.']

AUTHORS OF QUOTATIONS WANTED.

In Iceland, where the surface is of snow, Volcanic fires burn fiercest. Even so, Despite a face of pale placidity, What burning passions in the heart may lie ! Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.

RICHARD HEMMING.

From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure. E. T. PAGE.

OPEN SPACES. (9 th S. v. 286.)

THIS matter evidently exercised the mind of Thomas Carlyle. In the following con- temporary letter, addressed to the secretary of an institution " for the diffusion of know- ledge," he contrives to annex the subject of open spaces :

Chelsea, 26 January, 1843.

SIB, I had the honour several days ago to receive your invitation to the annual meeting of the Athenaeum, for which I can now only return my thanks and regrets. The state of my arrangements has rendered it impossible for me to come, and in some accidental confusion your note itself has been lost, so that I have too long neglected even to reply. Pray accept my excuses ; attribute my delay to something better than neglect.

Your institution, if I rightly understand it, is one to which all rational men will wish success. To provide the people with a place of reunion where they might enjoy books, perhaps music, recreations, instruction ; and, at all events, what is dearest to all men, the society and sight of one another : this is a thing of palpable utility, a thing at once possible and greatly needed ; it is a thousand pities this were not brought to pass, straightway, in all working towns ! I have re- gretted much, in looking at your great Manchester, and its thousand fold industries and conquests, that I could not find, in one quarter of it, a hundred acres of green ground, with trees on it, for the summer holidays and evenings of your all-conquering industrious men; and for winter season and bad weather quite another sort of social meeting-places than the gin shops offered ! May all this and much more be amended. May good and best speed attend you and your benevolent associates in your attempts to amend some part of it. I remain, with thanks and good wishes, Yours very truly,

T. CABLYLE.

If the prefigurement of Carlyle could have been acted upon in 1843, the citizens of Man- chester would have been free to-day of one of the most costly and perplexing scnemes of ler municipal administration.

RICHARD LAWSON.

Urmston.

At the above reference it is said, " We have now several Open Spaces Acts, the necessity of such ' lungs,' as I think Charles Dickens called them, being recognized on all hands." Lf it is intended that the phrase originated with Dickens, this, I believe, is an error. In a debate, 30 June, 1808, four years before Dickens was born, respecting encroachments upon Hyde Park, Mr. Windham alluded to hat park as "the lungs of London," although Mr. Windham, says a correspon- dent of ' N. & Q.' (8 th S. viii. 507 ; ix. 93),