Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/23

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

11 S. V. JAK. 6, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 15

suggested the titles of two or three books which I thought might possibly prevent further mistakes.

He now mentions 'Hart,' but does not give the year. However, I may point out that his latest statement, to the effect that "there is nothing in 'Hart' between the 79th and the 83rd Regiment," &c., is not correct, because these two regiments have not been named at all in 'Hart's Army List' since the year 1881. They have not existed, as such, for the past thirty years.

Probably Mr. Rhodes is confusing the "Regimental Districts" with the "Regiments." The former are entirely different organizations from the "Regiment."

J. H. Leslie.


Sheffield


" RIDING THE HIGH HOUSE " (11 S. iv. 490). Brewer, in ' Phrase and Fable,' s.v. ' Horse,' considers the phrase " to get upon your high horse." After explaining that it means " to give oneself airs," he continues thus :

" The Comte de Montbrison says : ' The four principal families of Lorraine are called the high horses, the descendants by the female line from the little horses or second class of chivalry. The hiffh horses are D'Haraucourt, L^nnoncourt, Ligneville, and Du Chatelet.' 'Me"moire de la Baronne d'Oberkirche.' "

THOMAS BAYNE.

CAPT. MARRY AT : ' DIARY OF A BLASE ' (11 S. iv. 409, 497). The following is taken from The New York Mirror, 19 November, 1836:

" Messrs. Carey & Hart of Philadelphia have reproduced in a very neat volume, clearly and distinctly printed, Capt. Marryat's ' Diary of a BlaseV which has appeared in successive numbers of the London Metropolitan Magazine. It is a spirited and racy collection of notes upon men and manners on the sea-coasts of England and Flanders, with a discursive range to the East Indies and Rangoon, quorum pars fuimus, and cannot fail to interest every reader."

I may add that I have not seen this reprint. LIBRARIAN.

Wandsworth.

' MATHEMATICAL TRANSACTIONS ' (11 S. iii. 246). It has occurred to me that sen- tences of the last paragraph of the ' Intro- duction ' to Button's ' Miscellanea Mathe- matica ' (London, 1775) may possibly refer to this periodical. The sentences are as follows :

" As an entire tract on the exhaustion of vessels of a fluid, hath not anywhere been delivered, that is made the subject of the first article. I know that a, beginning was made of the subject in a


former miscellany, but as no more than one number of it was ever published, that tract re- mained unfinished."

Now in my query I referred to an article by Mr. Ely Bates in No. 1 of the Trans- actions. This article is entitled ' A Method of Determining the Time of Exhausting any given Vessel filled with Water or any other Fluid,' &c., and it closes with the sentence :

" We might .now go on to determine the times of exhausting other sorts of vessels ; such as hemispheres, paraboloids, spheroids, &c., but this shall be reserved for the next number."

A plausible inference from the above is, that not later than 1775 the single number of the Mathematical Transactions was pub- lished. R. C. ARCHIBALD. Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.

" SABBATH DAY'S JOURNEY " (11 S. iv. 429). In the sixties there was published a book of rimes called ' The Lays pf Modern Oxford,' in which, I remember, the following doggerel occurs :

There was a young Freshman at Keble Whose legs were exceedingly feeble. He hired a fly To drive to "The High," A Sabbath day's journey from Keble.

Those who know their Oxford will recognize this as a very fine example of the Biblical use. The other use of the expression is due to the licensing laws, which in the London district at any rate make it necessary on Sunday, during closing hours, to walk over three miles before you can get a drink at a public-house. To many this journey is, no doubt, " of great length, distasteful, and involving undue exertion."

TRIN. COLL. CAMB.

The quotation from the ' N.E.D.' in your foot-note calls for some modification. The measured 1,225 yards were " not the utmost limits of permitted travel on the Sabbath." True enough, during the Babylonian cap- tivity it was so ('Tractate Sabbath,' 152). But we are now concerned with the period of Hebrew civilization, mirrored in the Talmud, under the rule of Rome. The Jews were mainly an agricultural people, with lesser interests in the walled or castellated cities that sprang up in their midst to over- awe them into servility. Within these, Jews of a lower grade went in for trades (< Pesachim,' 65; ' Kiddushin,' 33, 70, 83) beneath the dignity of the yeomen and farming classes. They had the tan- yards, slaughter-houses, bakeries, smithies, &c. These walled cities became the nuclei for all communal organizations, which the Parnassim and the Gabboeem