166
NOTES AND QUERIES. [10'" S. V. MARCH 3, 1906.
'the Country' [1820], 'The Hermit Abroad' [1823],
"The Highlanders' [1824], and other popular
"works. London, Booth, 1825." 12mo, pp. 106.
As a young man he '* went ahead," I pre- sume, in accordance with the time, for I have a note of the following curious book, which, though in the National Library, is not under his name in the Catalogue :
" Trial before the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland, at the instance of Daniel Ross, wood- sawer in Aberdeen, against Lieutenant Colonel <Jeo. Mackenzie, Captain Felix Bryan MacDonogh
- of the late regiment of Ross and Cromarty
Rangers, for the murder of John Ross, late soldier in the corps of Riflemen, in the streets of Aberdeen on 4 June, 1802. Aberdeen, 1803." -8vo, pp. 198.
The jury returned a verdict of not proven. I have little doubt that some account of MacDonogh's life would be interesting, if not much to his credit.
I may add to the reply of BUSHEY HEATH <W. Jordan) at 4 th S. iii. 300 that in his
- Autobiography,' vol. ii. p. 237, he says that
MacDonogh's articles helped to advance The Literary Gazette; he calls them "smart and graphic sketches of society." They were Announced in The Literary Gazette, at the instance of the publisher Colburn, as written by "a person of distinguished rank and title" a kind of lie (or supercherie) still used.
A few years previously a * Hermit' had been published in Paris, and both there and here the idea was worked until there was nothing more to be made out of it. An account of the French * Hermits,' mostly under the name of or attributed to De Jouy, will be found in Querard's * Supercheries,' where he errs in assigning the English books to T. S. Surr. The English, though perhaps derived from the French, were at once trans- lated into French, and published as original, chiefly by A. J. B. Defauconpret, while the French were translated into English.
' The Hermit in York ' (by Thomas Ashe) is mentioned at 8 th S. ii. 449, 594.
I doubt if " The Hermit of Edinburgh
London, Sherwood, Jones & Co., 1824," 3 vols., is by MacDonogh. RALPH THOMAS.
" BETTERMENT." Possibly I am singular in supposing this doctrine to be very modern. If I am not, the following, taken from Pepys's 'Diary,' under date 3 Dec., 1667, is interesting :
"Sir Richard Ford tells me also, speaking of the new street that is to be made from Guild Hall down to Cheapside, that the ground is already, most of it, bought, & tells me of one particular, of a man that hath a piece of ground lying in the very middle of the street that must be ;
which, when the street is cut out of it, there will
remain ground enough, of each side, to build a
house to front the street. He demanded 700Z. for
the ground, & to be excused paying any thing for the
melioration of the rest of his ground that he was to
keep. The Court consented to give him 700/. only
not to abate the consideration, which the man
denied ; but told them, so they agreed, that he
would excuse the City the 700., that he might have
the benefit of the melioration without paying any-
thing for it. So much some will get by having the
City burned Ground, by this means, that was not
4(Z. a foot before, will now, when houses are built, be worth 15s. a foot."
From the foregoing it is clear that the man saw a possibility of being charged more for " melioration " of the pieces of land re- tained than he would receive for the portion parted with.
The Act for the rebuilding of London was 18 & 19 Car. II., cap. 8, in the edition, of the Record Commissioners, known as 'The Statutes of the Realm/ and 19 Car. II., cap. 3, in Ruffhead's edition. MISTLETOE.
NAPOLEON'S FUNERAL I subjoin a cutting from The Beckenham Journal of 27 January, which seems worthy of preservation in the columns of ' N. & Q.' :
"Tuesday last was the Soth birthday of an interesting local personage, Mrs. Owen, of 14, Wickham Road, Beckenham. This lady is one of the only two persons still living who were present at the funeral of Napoleon, at St. Helena, on May 8th, 1821, the only other being her brother, Mr. Claude Bennetts, of Cape Town. At the time Mrs. Owen was an infant just over three months of age, and was taken in a carriage by her mother and nurse to the historic interment."
From details kindly supplied by the family I learn that the name of Mrs. Owen's brother is Mr. George Bennett, not as given above. He was at the time about four years of age, and remembers distinctly being taken on horseback to view the funeral.
W. R. B. PRIDEAUX.
Beckenham.
'BLEAK HOUSE': JARNDYCE v. JARNDYCE. The death of the oldest inhabitant of Col- chester, Joseph Jennings, at the age of 100, reminds one of the disputed will in his family which resulted in the law suit on which Dickens founded Jarridyce v. Jarndyce. A tablet in St. Peter's Church, Colchester, to one of Jennings's relatives concerned in the case, bears the text "Through deceit, they refuse to know me."
FREDERICK T. HIBGAME.
MOUNT MURRAY, ISLE OF MAN. Near Douglas is a hill bearing this name, derived, it is said, from the fact that there is on its slopes a residence built by a Murray related
