Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/55

 viii. JULY is, i9oi.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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present tense "are [not were] performed,' &c. Surely such shocking brutality was never surpassed, if equalled, in England or Russia in the worst days of the cat and the knout. Macaulay says that under Frederick the Great " military offences were punished with 'such barbarous scourging that to be shot was considered by the Prussian soldier as a secondary punishment." Although I am, on principle, opposed to capital punish- ment, I am almost inclined to say the same thing of the unhappy Colombian soldiers. It would seem to be more merciful to shoot a man out of hand than to flog him in the dreadful manner that IBAGUE describes, which is one of the most distressing instances of " man's inhumanity to man " that I have ever heard or read of.

Why has the Colombian Republic a special patent amongst the kingdoms of the earth, as it apparently has, for merciless military severity? " Blessed are the merciful." "This ilke text " the Colombian military authorities (and by implication the civil authorities also) evidently " hold not worth an oistre."

I shall wait with anxious interest to see if IBAGUE has any balm in Gilead for us in this matter. JONATHAN BOUCHIER.

ALLUSION IN WORDSWORTH (9 th S. vii. 188, 232, 338, 438). It may be well to state that my letter was written before the appear- ance of MR. HUTCHINSON'S first reply, but too late to be published along with it. It subsequently stood alone at the third refer- ence, occupying thus the position of a reply to all that had gone before. It was merely a tentative explanation, prompted by the original query, and not in any sense a retort to the genealogical statement submitted by MR. HUTCHINSON. THOMAS BAYNE.

"FAIR" AND MAKING "FAIR" (9 fch S. Vli.

446). I have known many instances of girls, in their foolish desire for a " genteel " pale- ness, eating dry rice and chalk, and refusing as much as possible a flesh diet. Chalk certainly, and probably rice eaten in excess in this way, would tend indirectly to induce pallor by deranging the digestive organs and obstructing the natural secretions of the body. Habitual constipation alone is a frequent cause of anaemia. C. C. B.

Half a century ago the plump and rosy- cheeked damsels of a Buckinghamshire village found that they, with their robust charms, were neglected by local swains, who favoured pale and languishing maidens from the metropolis. To counteract this deplorable tendency some of the girls endeavoured to

modify their rotundity and make themselves

Sale or fair by eating ginger. Others in- ulged in chalk and scraped slate-pencil, and a few tried all three. They succeeded more or less in producing pallor and sickliness of appearance, but the young men were not attracted ; and after one of the " ginger chewers," as they were called, died, the practice happily declined.

RICHD. WELFORD.

BENJAMIN WALKER (9 th S. vii. 368). I am unable to answer MR. W. H. WINDLE'S question ; but as he refers to the Stackhouse family, I may say that there is a stone in this churchyard to the memory of "Ann, the wife of John Stackhouse, of Birmingham, and daughter of Bartholomew and Ann Goodman, who departed this life July 5th, 1868, in the 67th year of her age."

JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

vii. 349, 437). A poem with this name, by the late Robert Buchanan, appeared in Once a Week, vol. x. (1863), p. 573.
 * THE TROTH OF GILBERT 1 BECKETT ' (9 fch S.

R. B. DOUGLAS.

64, Rue des Martyrs, Paris.

PORTRAIT OF LADY HARLEY (9 th S. vii. 508). 'The Letters of the Lady Brilliana Harley ' were published by the Camden Society in 1854. The editor, the Rev. T. T. Lewis, mentions in his introduction, p. xxix, that there was then a portrait of her " in the pos- session of her descendant Lord Rodney, and now at his seat at Berrington, in the county of Hereford." C. E. D.

Oxford.

A portrait of this lady is, or was, in the possession of the Right Hon. the Lord Rod- ney, Berrington, near Leominster, and I have no doubt a letter of inquiry addressed to R. W. Dacre Harley, Esq., Brampton Brian, Eerefordshire, would elicit definite informa- tion as to its exact location at the present ime. JAMES W. LLOYD.

Kington.

ORIENTATION AND THE EXIGENCIES OF CON- TROVERSY (9 th S. vii. 503). At present ] am out of the reach of books, and also of N. & Q., 1 but I am nearly certain MR. ARNOTT did use the term " Roman Mission," and I understood him to found an argument as to the Roman Church in England being an exotic on the fact that English churches were invariably placed east and west, whilst the Roman Catholic Church in England took no notice of this rule.