Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/467

 V.JUNE 9, im] NOTES AND QUERIES.

459

Accum, settled in England towards the end of the last century. He was for a time lecturer at the Surrey Institution, and he wrote several books, including one on gas lighting, which was a work of some authority in its day. There is a notice of Accum in the * Dictionary of National Biography.'

R. B. P.

^ GRACES " (9 th S. v. 336). In the early fifties we used to play the game thus. Each player had two sticks and a hoop. The hoops were thrown from the sticks by each player simultaneously, to be caught on the sticks of the opposite player and returned in the same manner. To keep the two hoops going at the same time required some practice. I have also seen the game played with one hoop between two players, and sometimes by a considerable number of players, standing in a square or ring and using any convenient number of hoops. Which is the " orthodox game " I cannot say. C. C. B.

"HOGNAYLE" (9 th S. y. 287). Something has been said about it in the 1 N.E.D.,' s. v. ' HogneP ; see also 'N. & Q.,' 9 th S. iii. 265 ; Brand's 'Popular Antiquities' (Bohn), 1849, i. 189-191. W. C. B.

BIBURY (9 th S. iv. 108, 172, 295, 331, 524; v. 384). Alvredintune is now Arlington. It is separated from Bibury by the river Coin. I have a map of the manor of Bibury of the year 1769. It takes in Arlington, and makes no mention of it as a separate manor. Abling- ton lies a mile from Bibury up-stream. It was originally Eadbaldingtune. Although in the parish of Bibury it is undoubtedly a separate manor with its old manor house. There is no trace of any manor house at Arlington. In- deed, the inhabitants of Arlington attended the court leet of the lord of the manor of Bibury. Sir Thomas Sackville fines them "quia rete corvili non habent nee utuntur."

SHERBORNE.

J. F. SMITH (9 th S. v. 377). There is a brief notice of this popular novelist in Allibone's ' Dictionary of English Literature,' and in the supplement to it the date of his death is given as 1890. Mr. Smith's 'Woman and her Master,' ' The Will and the Way,' and other stories which appeared in the London Journal, were remarkable for the skilful construction of the plots. There was little or no attempt at character painting, but incident succeeded incident with a rapidity that enchained the attention. The dramatis jjersonce were for the most part quite conventional. For Cassettes Family Paper Mr. Smith wrote
 * Dick Tarlelon',' which includes a graphic

picture of Knott Mill Fair, a Manchester carnival that has been since disestablished. Whether Mr. Smith had any personal know- ledge of the Cotton City, or derived his infor- mation from his publisher, the late Mr. John Cassell, who was born under the shadow of Manchester Church, I do not know.

In one of the numbers of Cassell' s Family Paper there was a notice about Mr. Smith of some biographical interest. I have no means at present of referring to it, but think it dealt with a difficulty between the French Govern- ment and Mr. Smith. He wrote for Cassell the earlier part of the 'History of Eng- land,' but not beyond the Reformation. Mr. Smith was said to have been educated by the Jesuits, if he was not actually a member at one time of that order. It was a matter of surprise to many that his stories were not immediately republished here in book form. This was done in the United States, where more than thirty volumes bear his name. Three or four have in recent years been published separately in our own coun- try with Sir John Gilbert's powerful and facile illustrations. There are some interest- ing particulars of J. F. Smith in an autobio- graphical volume by Mr. Thomas Frost ; but an adequate memoir of this clever Bohemian would Ibe a desirable addition to our bio- graphical literature. He is not mentioned in the ' Dictionary of National Biography.'

WILLIAM E. A. AXON.

Moss Side, Manchester.

Brief particulars of his death and con- nexion with the London Journal will be found in the Athenaeum of 15 March, 1890.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN. 71, Brecknock Road.

MOURNING IN 1661 (9 th S. v. 287). Black, the emblem of death, was from very early times the ordinary colour of mourning in Europe. Chaucer, in * Troylus and Creseyde ' (1369), says :

Creseyde was in widowe's habit black, and

My clothes everichone

Shall blacke ben, in tolequyn herte swete,

That I am as out of this world gone.

And again, in the 'Knight's Tale' (1388), Palamon attended a funeral

In clothes black dropped all with tears. We read also in l Hamlet ' (1603) :

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

Nor customary suits of solemn black,

That can denote me truly.

BYoissart, in his 'Chronicles of England, France, and Spain,' book iii. chap, ix., relates low the Count de Foix " clothed himself, as