Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/489

 9* s. vi. NOV. 24, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 405 Wale, by the most eminent English Artists." I do not know whether we are to understand that the four lines of verse at the foot of each are by the learned author himself, but it is difficult to repress a smile at several, par- ticularly at those illustrating the article on ' Knowledge.' A reverend gentleman in gown and bands, with a small telescope and globe on a table at his side, is pointing through an open window at the moon and a number of bright stars arranged in a form bearing no resemblance to any constellation, and lecturing to an assemblage of pupils on astronomy. Below are the delicious lines :— The Priest explains, inspired by Grace Divine, Each Planet's Laws, and ev'ry heav'nly Sign; The pious Pupil views them as they roll. Confesses God, and feels Him in his soul. The author would have been deeply aston- ished if he had been told that his lines savoured of polytheism. But they certainly do ; each planet has not its own laws, but the motions of all are regulated by the same laws, impressed by the same Creator. W. T. LYNN. Blackheath. MOVABLE STOCKS.—It will be remembered that in Shakespeare's ' King Lear,' Act II. sc. ii., the Duke of Cornwall orders the servants to " fetch forth the stocks" from the Earl of Gloster's castle, so that the Earl of Kent may be placed therein, outside the castle. Then follow the directions, " Stocks brought out," "Kent is put in the stocks." The Church Monthly for January, 1901 (issued in advance as an advertisement), gives a picture of " some movable stocks kept in the Guildhall at Much Wenlock. They were intended for wheeling round the parish when persons were punished, as an example to others. These stocks are said to date from the reign of Queen Elizabeth."—P. 14. W. C. B. COL. ISAAC BARRE.—On looking over my note on 'Miss Trefusis' (ante. p. 281) I see that one sentence may perhaps be mis- construed. I said that Col. Barre had received a wound in the American War. The American War is generally understood to mean the war which resulted in the in- dependence of the thirteen colonies. Col. Barre was not engaged in this war, to which, indeed, he was strongly opposed. Several years previously he had been employed on Wolfe's staff during the war with the French in Canada. At Quebec, where he was serv- ing as adjutant-general, ho lost an eye and was injured so severely in the other that eventually he completely lost his sight. Readers of Horace Walpolo will remember the mot of Lord North, who had long been blind, and who, on Barre visiting him in 1787, said, "Col. Barre, nobody will suspect us of insincerity, if we say that we should always be overjoyed to see each other." Wolfe had so high an opinion of his right- hand man that he left him a hundred guineas in his will. Barre was held in equal esteem by Amherst, who selected him to convey to England the despatches announcing the cap- ture of Montreal. Some time after his arrival he left the service, and, being intro- duced to public life by Lord Shelburne, proved for many years a useful partisan, having a considerable flow of language and a pretty talent for invective. Oblivious of the truth that many years afterwards was enun- ciated by Lord Beaconsfield in one of his novels, that "abuse is not argument," he belonged to that numerous class of politicians who substantiate their own case by blacken- ing the character of their opponents. Sub- sequently he accepted a pension of 3,200^.. a course of action which laid him open to the sneers of that eminent sinecurist Horace Walpole. It would perhaps have been better for his reputation if ne had been of the opinion of a much greater soldier of our own days, and had " kept aloof from politics." W. F. PRIDEAUX. "OoNE TO JERICHO."—The following extract from the Property Market Review of 29 Sept. (p. 829) may be of interest to philologists :— "Braintree [is] a village which gave rise to the proverb in which 'Jericho' stands for a remote and undefined locality. It was at the old country seat, quaintly named Jericho, which was close to the little faded and shrunken town of Blackmore, that Henry VIII. carried on an intrigue with the beautiful Lady Elizabeth Tailbois, the mother of his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy. The local tradition is that his courtiers, when the king was suddenly missing from Court, were in the habit of saying that his Majesty ' had gone to Jericho,' and from this circumstance arose the cant [more pro- perly, slang] phrase, in vogue to this day." There is a different meaning in Chatto & Windus's 'Slang Dictionary.' F. MARCHAM. PERCH.— In one of MR. S. O. ADDY'S valuable contributions to ' N. & Q.,' setting forth his discovery of a fixed relation between the area of villeins' dwellings and that of their land-holdings, he says: " Houses were erected in bays of 16 ft. in length, and this was a unit of measurement." In Wright's ' Homes of Other Days' may be seen illustra- tions of an early feature of internal furnish- ing—the perch (med. Lat. pertica, equiv. to A.-S. ro$, rood), on which falcons or fowls I