498
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. i. JUNE is, 190*.
the suppression of the rebellion in the
Tynteah and Cossy-Ah Hills in 1862 and 1863,
we had as part of our force a body of hillmen
armed with bows and arrows. The enemy
(of course friends and relations of our archers)
had their arrows tipped with poison, while
ours were supposed to be poison free. This
was thought at the time by some of us to give
the enemy an undue advantage and likely to
breed want of confidence in the bosoms of our
archers. C. J. DUBAND.
Guernsey. __
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.
The Letters of Horace Walpole. Edited by Mrs.
Paget Toyubee. 16 vols. Vols. V., VI. VII.,
VIII. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.) WITH praiseworthy diligence and punctuality Mrs. Toynbee has placed in the hands of her readers the second instalment of her new, enlarged, and in every way admirable edition of the letters of Horace Walpole, half the complete work having accordingly been delivered to the public. The period covered by the four volumes now issued is 1760-74. Sir Horace Mann is still the principal correspondent, but George Montagu runs a good second, and the names of Lady Mary Coke and the Hon. Henry Seymour Conway are of frequent occurrence. Com- pared with the edition of Peter Cunningham we find some changes, though few of moment. In the opening letter of vol. v., addressed from Arlington Street, Thursday, 1760 (sic), describing the com- position of " the Bedchamber," the appointment of Lord Eglinton is said to be "at the earnest request of the Duke of York " instead of " at the request." A little lower down, in a comment on the behaviour of the Duke of Richmond with regard to Col. Keppel, "this was handsome" replaces "this is handsome," and the word triste is spelt "trist." Cunningham's notes, and those of Wright, dis- appear, being still, presumably, copyright, though the substance of them is sometimes preserved in an altered form. As a rule the notes to the later edition are shorter and more numerous than in the earlier. The illustrations are entirely different, the portraits in vol. v. consisting of Horace Wal- pole, from a painting by Eckhardt in the National Portrait Gallery ; Lady Mary Coke, from a mezzotint ; Nelly O'Brien, by Reynolds, from Hertford House ; and the first Marquis of Hertford, by Reynolds, from the same source. In vol. vi. are portraits, from prints, of Horace Wal- pole, after Falconet, and the third Duke of Rich- mond, and, from paintings by Sir Joshua, of Sir William Hamilton and the third Earl of Orford. Portraits in vol. vii. of Mrs. Darner, the Duke of Gloucester, and the third Earl of Albemarle are all after Reynolds, while one of Horace Walpole is after Nathaniel Hone. Reynolds supplies one more portrait of Walpole and one of Maria, Duchess of Gloucester, to vol. viii., in which are also the fifth Earl of Carlisle, after Romney, and Henry Seymour Conway, after Gainsborough. So far as the work has progressed, there are about one hundred letters more than in the edition of Peter Cun- ningham.
A Heifer of the Dawn. Translated from the-
Original Manuscript by F. W. Bain. (Parker
&Co.)
IN reviewing ' The Descent of the Sun ' and ' A Digit of the Moon,' previous translations from the Sanskrit (see 9 th S. xii. 279), we expressed a hope that Mr. Bain might be able to supply us with a constant succession of stories or myths no less delightful than those to which he then introduced us. The present volume, which is no less winsome and delightful than its pre- decessor and comes apparently from the same source, is the first step to the fulfilment of our wish. It is an Indian love story, delicate, fragrant, and inspired, and differing only from the best Oriental models in the fact that the purely sensual aspects of love which ordinarily prevail in such works are absent, and that the whole is fiowerlike in grace and purity. We suppose it to be, like each of the previous works, a sun myth, but have learnt to be no more fearsome of that formidable term- than we are of the allegory with which it was once sought to fright us from the ' Faerie Queen.' The Oriental use of the word heifer to signify wife or queen is illustrated in the words of Samson to the men of the city who had answered his riddle If ye had not plowed with niy heifer Ye had not found out my riddle. "Si non arassetis in vitula mea, non invenissetis- propositionem meam." The title equals the col- lected sweetness of the heifer, that is, the ambrosia of the early morning in a feminine shape. In the course of an interesting philological note, one of many scattered through the book, the feminine form of the ambrosia of the dawn is said to be the name of one of the digits of the moon, and the analogy is drawn that Isis, the horned moon=Io, the heifer. Like the 'Arabian Nights' Entertain- ment,' the story opens with the jealousy begotten in an Indian potentate by the discovery of his- wife's infidelity, and closes with the manner in which this is conquered by a king's daughter, who, [ike Miss Hardcastle, stoops to conquer, and wins lim disguised as her own handmaiden or Che"tf. Altogether delicious is the account of his subjuga- tion. All men of taste and culture should read this and the previous volumes, and they will then join us in the cry for more, still more. The entire MS., which Mr. Bain claims under romantic circum- stances to have discovered, should be given to the world. Whether it is genuine or spurious is nothing
- o us. It is at least delightsome.
MR. ALFRED C. JONAS writes concerning the
threatened destruction of Whitgift's Hospital of
the Holy Trinity, Croydon : " A year or two ago I
was allowed to contribute to the pages of ' N. & Q.'
a few facts with regard to this ancient and historic
auilding. As I then indicated, there was an idea
among so-called 'improvers' of effacing this, the
only really perfect piece of antiquity remaining
n Croydon. As its V isitors' Book shows, people
from all parts, at least, of English-speaking
nations visit and admire the Hospital. To-day
what was feared has taken unmistakable form, and
the Croydon C.C. are about to seek powers for so-
called ' improvements,' to which is ' tagged ' power to
destroy one of the brightest links which connect
the past with the twentieth century. This worse
than vandalism has, however, now aroused the
interest and indignation of many learned societies,
