me from asking any one what the expression does mean the dread of appearing ignorant keeping me ignorant, as it does so many others, and will go on doing to the end of time. Now, though late, I confess my sin and weakness. I do not know what a chap-book means, and lest I should go to my grave in wilful ignorance of what, I suppose, I ought to have known forty years ago, 1 hereby ask your contributors to explain to me what a chap-book is. AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.
HAMPSTEAD PARISH CHURCH. Is there any int existing of the chapel of St. Mary, Hamp- id, besides Hollar's, or any other known draw-
- ? The present Georgian church took its place
1745. It is hideous seen close, but most )icturesque at a long distance. Its modern apse, it the west end, was built in 1874-5, in defiance of 11 traditions of prayer towards the east as old as loses and probably older. HENRY COLE.
Hampstead.
THOMAS TUSSER. St. Mildred's Church has disappeared, with many other time marks of London's city. But Time will have ample revenge. The City will become so uninteresting that its trade will collapse, and even now retail traders find it hard work to pay their rents. What is lost to history, to literature, to archaeology, to enlighten- ment and refinement, by the levelling process will be felt by a few. But when the City is occupied only by warehouses, banks, and policemen, ruin will fall upon thousands. If the London roughs knew the state of things even now, the city of London would be swept clean in one night. St. Mildred having been annihilated, I am compelled to ask aid in the endeavour to discover where Tusser dwelt during his two several sojourns in London. Were the church of St. Mildred still standing I might be in the same plight as now, but I should at all events prefer to begin my inquiry there, and mayhap in the parish registers there may be records of his whereabouts during his second residence in London. It was probably in the parish of St. Mildred ; it may have been in or very near Bucklersbury. He may be regarded as speaking of himself when he says :
" Though such by wo, through Lothbury go, For being spy'd about Cheapside, Lest Mercer's books, for money looks, Small matter it is."
Wanted the London address of Thomas Tusser,
- gent., author of Five Hundred Points of Good
Husbandry. SHIRLEY HIBBERD.
Stoke Newington.
COLOURS OF THE WINDS. Eugene O'Curry, in his lectures on the manners and customs of the ancient Irish, touches on this curious subject, and in regretting that he cannot in the narrow limits of Ais lectures give more time to the investigation of
a theory of colours in connexion with the pheno- mena of winds, says :
" Of the acquaintance of the ancient Irish with the nature and combinations of colours an instance is pre- served in the preface to the Seanchas Mor, that great law compilation which is believed to have been compiled in St. Patrick's time.
" The writer of this preface, which is evidently not so old as the laws themselves, when speaking of the design and order of the creation, gives the following practical description of the nature and character of winds. He (the Lord) then created the colours of the winds, so that the colour of each differs from the other, namely, the white and the crimson ; the blue and the green ; the yellow and the red ; the black and the grey ; the speckled and the dark ; the dull black and the grisly. Prom the east (he continues) comes the crimson wind ; from the south, the white ; from the north, the black ; from the west, the dun. The red and the yellow are produced between the white wind and the crimson ; the green and the grey are produced between the grisly and the white ; the grey and the dull black are produced between the grisly and the jet black ; the dark and the mottled are produced between the black and the crimson ; and these are all the sub-winds contained in each and all of the cardinal winds."
O'Curry goes on to say :
" It would be a curious speculation to inquire into the meaning of this strange theory of coloured winds, but it contains at a glance evidence at least of the existence, when this most ancient preface was written, of a distinct theory of the relations and combinations of colours."
Are there notices in the early literature of other countries of any theory of the colours of the winds ? W. H. PATTERSON.
Belfast.
JOHN IRETON, LORD MAYOR OF LONDON. John Ireton, Alderman of London, and Lord Mayor in 1658, has been stated to have favoured the Eestoration and to have evinced his loyalty by appearing in the cavalcade when King Charles II. made his public entry into London. Some autho- rity for this statement is particularly desired.
COLONEL FRANCIS HACKER. The registers of St. Peter's, Nottingham, record the marriage of Mr. Francis Hacker and Mrs. Isabell Brunt, July 5, 1632. This Francis Hacker was un- doubtedly the Parliamentary colonel, and his wife seems to have been a daughter of Gabriel Brunt, of East Bridgeford, in Nottinghamshire. In the pedigree entered by William Hacker, of Trowell, in the Visitation of Nottinghamshire taken in 1662, Colonel Francis Hacker is stated to have married and to have had a son and daughter, Francis and Anne. The name of his wife is not given. Any information relative to his descendants would be gladly received.
A. E. LAWSON LOWE, F.S.A.
Highfield, near Nottingham.
"THE LITERARY MAGNET." What was the date of the commencement of this magazine, by whom was it published, and how long was its
