Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/432

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358


NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. VIIL NOV. 2, 1007..


like that in a stable running down the middle, such as one used to travel by on the London and South-Western Railway about 1865. In an amusing book, 'The Season Ticket,' dated 1860, and attributed to Sam Slick, is an account of a passenger slipping out of one of these, and getting into the next compartment. He then peeps over, and with a vesuvian sets fire to the perfumed beard of a passenger in the other division. On the side of the volume is im- printed a facsimile of the ticket No. 239 between Waterloo and Southampton.

JOHK PlCKFORD, M.A. Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge.

ZOFFANY'S INDIAN PORTRAITS (10 S. vii. 429; viii. 14, 110, 174). I have come across references to two more portraits :

(a.) Mrs. Warren Hastings in 1783. This followed Hastings to England after his retirement from India, and his wife " caused it to be hung in a, remote part of Dayles- ford House " (S. C. Grier's ' The Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife ').

(6.) Carey with his moonshee. This is in the Baptist College at Serampur, near Cal- cutta, Carey having been one of the great Baptist missionary trio, " Carey, Marshman, and Ward." The work is " said to be by Zoffany " (vide H. E. A. Cotton's ' Calcutta Old and New,' recently published).

WlLMOT CORFIELD.

Calcutta.

REINDEER : ITS SPELLING (10 S. viii. 170, 258). Will MR. MAYCOCK kindly furnish readers of ' N. & Q.' with a brief account of the episode at Mamhead in 1862 ? It would be interesting, no doubt, to many of us after the lapse of so many years.

CURIOUS.


NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Charm of London : an Anthology. Compiled

by Alfred H. Hyatt. (Chatto & Windus.) THIS volume, which belongs to " The St. Martin's Library," has the advantage of excellent type and handy form. It should be in many hands this season, for it is an admirable collection, which is $ credit to writers of to-day as well as the immorta' ghosts like those of Johnson and Lamb, both desperate loA r ers of London. Books we have hac


Friendly Town.' Mr. Hyatt, however, fairl entitles himself to a hearing by the width an( ingenuity of his search for suitable pieces ; he ha been exceptionally fortunate in securing selection


till protected by copyright, as the long list of icknowledgments in the front of the book shows. t is chiefly modern London which he presents to is, and it is a real pleasure to note the high level if accomplishment with which she has inspired her otaries. To say, as Mr. Hyatt does, that London's- ' every street is ' holy, havmted ground,' " and ' every byway is fragrant with the spirit of the last," is to exaggerate absurdly. If he had said hat there was endless romance about the place, he ivould have been accurate.

Most of the pieces here given are both charming ind suitable, but in two or three cases we see no eason for insertion. There is no word of London, n Matthew Arnold's poem 'To my Friends,' or

ovelace's beautiful, out now hackneyed, ' T mcasta, going beyond the Seas,' or Mrs. Browning's. To England Dy Sea.' On the other hand, the lovo >f London is neatly expressed in a passage from Vl r. Pett Ridge's ' Mora Em'ly ' ; in the fine prose of Mr. Howells, Mr. Henry James, and Mr. Georg& Vleredith ; and in the elaborate artistry of Mr. ?. M. HuefFer. But of all modern writers George

isaing has penetrated deepest into the sordid core the great city, as a passage from his 'Henry rlyecroit ' shows.

In verse we find Tennyson's splendid lines : And at night along the dusky highway near and

nearer drawn, Sees in heaven the light of London flaring like a.

dreary dawn. There is true vision in the raptures of Mr. David- son and Mr. Noyes. Maxwell Gray has a charming,

5oem on ' The London Flower-Seller,' which is new
o us. Mrs. Marriott Watson has a picture of

1 London in October,' which is perfect in its sugges- }ion of atmosphere. Lillian Street, Annie Mathe-- son, Amy Levy, Robert Buchanan, Henry S. Leiarh in light vein, Locker-Lampson, the epitome of neatness and grace all figure to advantage, with many others.

There is a table of contents with title, source of ixtract, and author, but there is, alas ! no index of first lines. How long, we wonder, will publishers, compilers, and authors take to realize that this is the guide to ready reference which a reader wants in every book containing any amount of verse? Mr. Hyatt is no novice, and ought to have seen to this matter. We should like to draw up a few commonsense suggestions for makers of books, who grow more careless day by day of the comfort of readers.

WE welcome the October number of The Reliquary (Bemrose) now edited by the Rev. J. Charles Cox, whose skill and wide interest in antiquities, especially of the ecclesiastical sort, should be of great service. An obituary is re- printed from The Athenceum of the late editor, Mr. Romilly Allen. Dr. Cox himself writes on ' The- Old Crosses of the Isle of Man ' : Mr. W. H. Leg on various specimens of the " Trinita " ; Mr. G. Blanc Smith on ' Some Dragonesque Forms on,, and beneath, Fonts'; and Mr. Tavenor- Perry on ' Detached Wooden Belfries,' which are commoner abroad than in this country. There are several excellent illustrations, and altogether this quarterly is well worth the perusal of antiquaries. With the January number the notices of books are to be- extended, and a quarterly list will be started of all. works of importance, on " archaeological, tor. graphical, ethnological, or artistic ssbiects."