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 generously seconded, to tender them my public and grateful acknowledgments for their long-continued kindnesses.


 * With conscious pride I view the band
 * Of faithful friends that round me stand ;
 * With pride exult that I alone
 * Have joined these scattered gems in one ;
 * Rejoiced to be the silken line
 * On which these pearls united shine.

"This pride is surely a most justifiable one ; and he who could separate himself from the pleasant associations which I have thus enjoyed for nearly a quarter of a century, without deep pain and emotion, must be made of sterner materials than I can boast.

"That pain would be yet greater, that emotion yet more deep, did I not feel assured that in resigning my 'plumed' sceptre into the hands of Dr. Doran, I entrust it to one who not only desires to maintain unchanged the general character of this Journal, but will by his intelligence, courtesy, and good feeling, secure for dear old Notes and Queries the continued allegiance of those kind and intelligent friends who have made it what it is.

"To those friends, one and all, I now with the deepest gratitude, and most earnest wishes for their welfare and happiness, tender a hearty and affectionate.

"In publicly acknowledging how great are my obligations to my accomplished friend Mr. James Yeowell, for his valued and long-continued assistance, I am doing a simple act of justice which it affords me the highest gratification to perform."

The editorship of Dr. Doran commenced on the 5th of October, Notes and Queries having been purchased by Sir Charles W. Dilke, its publication was removed to 20, Wellington Street, the office of The Athenaeum, and my father became its publisher. For the first fourteen years it was published by Mr. George Bell, of Bell & Daldy, now the well-known firm of George Bell & Sons. Mr. Bell took great interest in its progress, and regretted much having to sever his connexion with it; but with the increase of his own business, and the fact that Notes and Queries now required an office of its own, it was not possible to combine the two. When Mr. Thoms decided upon the change he consulted with my father, who took in hand all the business details until Notes and Queries was safe in its new home.

On the 3rd of January, 1874, Dr. Doran, in introducing the first number of the Fifth Series, states that Mr. Thoms, when commencing the Third Series, quoted the lines addressed by Ben Jonson to Selden

"as lines the applicability of which to this journal had been pointed out by one of the first and most valued of our contributors. They are