Berks County, Pennsylvania, originally almost a pure German colony: "At Dr. Leisenring's Hermitage.· On the 800 feet high Cushion Hill, (Berks County Cold Springs,) between Reading and Womelsdorf, on the Lebanon Valley Railroad, have been lately several family parties and pic-nics in the open air, on week days. "The heavenly environs on the platform, under large shade trees, the amusement arrangements, and that a person can easy drive on the top of the hill, makes the abode here incomparably agreeable; near or far it is not so easy to find a place that offers such varieties. "To secure the locality, in order to satisfy the wishes, a person will do well to give previous notice of it, under direction. "LEISENRING'S HERMITAGE, "August 9-2mo." Kilkenny. Large Oysters.— JAMES GRAVES. "Alexander, with his friends and physicians, wondered to find oysters in the Indian seas a foot long; and in Pliny's time (Nat. Hist., lib. xxxii. c. 6.), they marvelled at an oyster which might be divided into three morsels, naming it tridacnon. But I dare, and do truly affirm, that at my eldest brother's marriage at Aldham Hall, Essex, I did see a Peldon oyster divided into eight good morsels, whose shell was nothing less than that of Alexander's."- Monfet's Health's Improvement, London, 1655, p. 161. In the University of Leyden an oyster shell is or was shown, weighing 130 lbs. R. W. HACK WOOD. "John de Lancaster."-An elderly lady of my acquaintance lately related to me a singular fact in connexion with the above-mentioned novel. Mr. Cumberland, its author, called to her just as he was finishing its composition, and read aloud to her the contents of the last sheet. She said to him: "Your novel will not sell." "Why?" he asked, with surprise and some anxiety. "Because you drag us through three volumes, following the fortunes of your hero, and then you kill him." More was said to the same effect, and the consequence was, that the concluding chapters of the novel in question were materially altered. THRELKELD. Whistle Tankards. The following has gone the round of the papers: "Mrs. Mary Dixon, widow of a Canon residentiary of York, has presented two ancient silver tankards to the corporation of Hull. One of them is a whistle tankard,' which belonged to Anthony Lambert, Mayor of Hull in 1669. Mrs. Dixon has been frequently told that there is only one other whistle tankard in the kingdom.' The whistle comes into play when the tankard is empty; so that when it reaches the hands of a toper, and there is nothing to drink, he must, if he wants liquor, 'whistle for it,' which possibly may be the origin of the popular phrase." At this rate may not the phrase of "wetting one's whistle" be also referred to the filling of such tankard ? Where is the "other" tankard referred to ? Queries. MEANING OF LECKERSTONE. What is the origin of the name Leckerstone, as applied to a farm-house near an abbey or monastery? The circumstances are these. There is a farm with a neat mansion-house of that name, about a mile from the town and abbey of Dunfermline, county of Fife; and still nearer the town, in the same direction, there is another farm, named the Grange, anciently, it is presumed, the granary of the abbey. May Leckerstone have received its name from monastic times and usages? I am informed that there is a somewhat similar name given to a spot in the parish of Abdie, also in Fife, near the Grange village and the abbey of Lindores, where there were two licker-stanes, as they were pronounced, one on each side of a footpath leading to the Den, and thence to the Abbey, forming, as it were, posts or pillars at its entrance. They were about three feet high, square and flat on the top. They were not hewn, but merely boulders of a bluish colour, gathered from the land, and no doubt selected for the purpose. The uniform tradition is, that they were used at funerals, as a resting-place on which the coffin or bier was put, while being conveyed to the churchyard, and that there the priest or minister read lessons or lectures, or gave an address, and hence the name. They were removed nearly sixty years since, and are reported to have been put to some useful purpose near the Manse. It is believed, on the authority of a deceased* able antiquary, W. D. D. Turnbull, Esq., Advocate, that the abbey of Lindores once stood on the margin of the loch, and therefore near to the Grange, to which a monumental stone statue lately found on the bank of the loch gives some countenance. There is a portion of ground, jutting into the loch, called the Licker Inch, or as interpreted by some, Lecturer's Inch. There is a place, too, in the parish of Falkland (not far distant) called Leckerstanes, on the side of the road leading from the village of Fruchie in the parish to the churchyard. As I have the prospect of going to press about a month hence with a second volume of my "Historical and Statistical Account of Dunfermline,” published in 1844, your early reply, either by [* We are happy to assure our correspondent that this accomplished antiquary is still among us, but practising in London instead of Edinburgh.—EĎ. “N. & Q.”] letter or in your printed "N. & Q.," will much oblige. P. C. ANCIENT REPRESENTATIONS OF THE TRINITY. Happening lately to be inspecting the very pleasant little Musée at Rypres, I noticed a wood carving; one of three large old medallions, which, in connexion with another similar curiosity, may interest your readers. The carving had for its subject a representation of the Trinity. The Father, a reverend old man, sitting, supports the cross; on which is stretched our Redeemer, his head (as is usual in early representations) declining to the right. In extreme suffering, the figure resembles the painting of the same painful subject by the Byzantine artists: the limbs long and extenuated, the face hollow, and full of agony. From the mouth of the Father proceeds the dove, the third person in the Trinity being thus symbolised, in full wing; flying towards the bowed head of the suffering Christ. The whole reminded me forcibly of a carving in Morwenstow Church, Cornwall, carefully preserved with true antiquarian zeal by the learned vicar, the Rev. R. S. Hawker. On the right hand, in this carving, the Son is shown-a face with some rude notions of beauty; from His mouth proceed two curious strings, ornamented with pellets. On the higher of these two the dove is seen attacking the dragon, who, in his turn, is attempting to demolish the church, symbolised by a tower: on the other side of which, previous to its destruction by some local barbarian, the Father, the reverend aged head, might have been seen. I shall, perhaps, succeed better in describing this fragment of ecclesiastical ornamentation by adding the explanation with which the vicar of the parish kindly furnished me : "The turret, or tower, is the symbol of the Church Universal. "The assailant of the Church is the dragon; type of Satan, the foe. "The defender of the Church is the Holy Ghost, the Dove; which proceedeth from the second person of the Trinity, God the Son." I should suppose neither of these carvings date earlier than the fourteenth century; on this point, however, I should be glad of information. T. H. PATTISON. [For a notice of the bosses in Morwenstow Church, see "N. & Q.," 1st S, x. 123.] of Ightham, near Sevenoaks, my attention was caught by a mural monument containing the bust of a lady, who was traditionally reported to have written the letter which proved the cause of discovering the Gunpowder Plot. Behind the moThe following was the epitaph: nument was some of her needlework suspended. "D. D. D. To the pretious name and honor of Dame Dorothy Selby, the Relict of Sir William Selby, Kt. the Whose curious needle wound the abused stage Whose arte disclosed that plot, which, had it taken, In heart a Lydia, and in tongue a Hanna, To the world a Martha, and to heaven a Mary. of her Has the Papal Condemnation of the Copernican System been retracted? - In various books I have seen statements that the Pope has retracted the prohibition of the Copernican theory. Thus Sir Francis Palgrave, in The Merchant and the Friar (1837), p. 304., says: Pope Pius certainly showed great kindness to us heretics: he acted much like a gentleman, and, behaved very handsomely, when, in 1818, he came into the consistory, and repealed the edicts against Galileo and the Copernican system." And Admiral Smyth, in his Cycle of Celestial Objects (1824), vol. i. p. 65., says: "The Newtonian doctrines, softened by the term hypo thesis instead of theory, had been taught in the Roman Catholic Universities of Europe; until at length, in 1818, the voice of truth was so prevailing, that Pius VII. repealed the edicts against the Copernican system, and thus, in the emphatic words of Cardinal Toriozzi,' wiped off this scandal from the church."" Can any of your readers tell me what is the foundation of these assertions, and where the "repeal" here spoken of can be found? W. W. Heraldry. What means exist for ascertaining to what family a particular coat of arms belongs? I am aware that the family and county being known, Burke's Armoury, or any other similar work, will enable me to find the arms, if the family be entitled to bear them. But I want to know how to perform the reverse operation, i. e. the arms only being known, to ascertain the family or families by whom they were borne- an application of heraldry very useful for the topographical historian. Macclesfield. R. Heraldic.- If in 1600 a grant was made of a coat of arms to John Jones and his descendants, and on the grant were included also the descendants male of the grandchildren, grandfather, &c., with those of the collaterals, could a person descended from the same branch as John Jones, but very distantly related to him, legally use the same crest, &c. ? O'MALLEY. Hogarth's Crest. What is the meaning of the device Hogarth, the caricaturist, placed upon the panels of his chariot? The following is as good a description of it as can be given without an engraving. On a shield azure the letters c. v. in chief, and P. R. U. s. in base; and for crest a pyramid or cone encircled with wavy lines on a wreath. Probably these wavy lines were intended to illustrate his theory of the line of beauty. C. J. DOUGLAS. Bradshaws of D'Arcy Leven. Can any of your correspondents furnish information as to the Bradshaws of D'Arcy Leven, in Lancashire (a branch, I believe, of the Bradshaws of Bradshaw, in the same county), more especially as to the family of James Bradshaw, who lived about the close of the seventeenth century? What are the armorial bearings of the family? E. C. B. Master Masons of Antwerp. - Having met with the following paragraph in an interesting volume recently published, called Flemish Interiors, I should be glad if any of your readers could say whether the practice to which it refers is confined to the masons of Antwerp. "A curious and, I believe, peculiar custom still exists at Antwerp among the guild of masons. Henri Conscience, the great Belgian writer, who was perambulating the town with me, informed me as we passed their hall, that whenever a new master-mason was to be elected, it was necessary that, previously to being initiated into his somewhat important position, he should prove himself worthy of the dignity about to be conferred on him, by pulling down and rebuilding with his own hands the façade of one portion of the building, which has consequently been re-erected innumerable times, though the remainder of the edifice is sufficiently venerable. If the candidate shrunk from this trial, there was no alternative but to yield his claim.” — Flemish Interiors. AN ODDFELLOW. Kemeys Family.-G. S. S. wishes to inquire if any Irish correspondent of "N. & Q." can inform him who was the first of the ancient Welsh family of Kemeys that settled in the Queen's County, and founded the very respectable house of Kemmis there? Was the first Kemmis a follower of Cromwell? King's School, Chester. - I am desirous to make known, through the medium of "N. & Q.,” that I am collecting materials for a history of this school, and that I shall be happy to receive communications from all who may be able and willing to assist me in my labours. The field is, in every respect, an unploughed one; hence the greater necessity for intelligent labourers to aid me in the task. Old "King's Boys," whether educated on "the foundation " or as private pupils, are invited to contribute their quota of information, especially anecdotes of the school or its more distinguished scholars, at their earliest convenience, to 4. Paradise Row, Chester. T. HUGHES. Brewer's Will. I have seen somewhere or other that in a brewer's will it was directed that his heirs should always keep a cask of ale and drinking vessel on the public road, for the free use of all travellers. Can you tell me whether this bequest is attended to, and where the ale is ? HUMILIS. Family of Brydges.- Can any of your readers give me any information respecting the family of Brydges, more particularly of that branch of the family settled in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire? Who are, or were, the descendants of Anthony, third son, and also of the younger sons, of John Brydges, 1st Lord Chandos? After which of the family are Brydges and Chandos Streets, Covent Garden, and Chandos Street, Cavendish Square, named? Any information will be thankfully received. R. C. Judge Jessopp.-Can any of the readers of "N. & Q." inform me if there was a judge of the King's Bench or Common Pleas of this name, should be able to ascertain the fact, and obtain about the middle of the last century? or how I particulars of his history and family? I believe he was a Derbyshire man. J. B. Cavendish Club. Dr. Bloxam?-A book is before me entitled "A Collection of Receipts in Physic, being the Practice of the late eminent Dr. Bloxam: containing a Complete Body of Prescriptions answering to every Disease, with some in Surgery. To which are added by the Editor a General Account of the Operations of all Kinds of Medicines: also Occasional Remarks, Directions, and Cautions, suited to the different stages of Distempers, in order to render this Work particularly useful in Families. The Second Edition. London. 8vo. Printed for Lockyer Davis at Lord Bacon's Head, near Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, MDCCLIV." The editor, whose name does not appear, gives no account in the preface of " this eminent physician lately dead," any information respecting whom will be most welcome to MAGDALENENSIS. Minor Queries with Answers. "Etitis."—What is the stone Etitis, mentioned by Aristotle? T. W. W. Brighton. [Etites, or Eagle-stone, is a flint, or crustated and hollow stone, found in slates of our common pebbles; it rattles on being shaken, and contains a nucleus. Many miraculous properties were attributed to it by the ancients; such as the prevention of abortion, the discovery of thieves, &c. There is also an idle popular story, that the female eagle (derós, whence its name, atites), takes up this stone into her nest, while she is sitting, to prevent her eggs being rotten. They are at first soft, and become hard by their exposure to the atmosphere. Near Trevoux, in France, they are very numerous. Ency. Metropolitana.] Rhyming Dictionary. Has there ever been published a Dictionary to assist poets in the selection of rhymes? If there has not, I should think it would be a good "spec" for some of your learned correspondents to undertake the manufacturing of one. If one has been published, perhaps you can inform me who is the publisher and the price of it. C. J. DOUGLAS. [The Muses have already provided for their embryo pupils the following works: Walker's Dictionary of the English Language, answering at once the Purposes of Rhyming, Spelling, and Pronouncing, 8vo., Lond., 1775; and Bysshe's Art of English Poetry, with a Dictionary of Rhymes, 5th edit., 2 vols., Lond., 1714.] Quotation wanted: "Thinking," &c. -Who is the author of these lines? "Thinking is but a useless waste of thought, For naught is everything, and everything is naught." ANON. [The lines are from The Rejected Addresses, from Cui Bono, a poem in which Byron was cleverly imitated, and run thus: "Thinking is but an idle waste of thought, For nought is everything, and everything is nought."] Wills, a Portrait Painter.- About the middle of the last century flourished a painter of the name of Wills, and on one of Faber's mezzotints (1748), I observe that he is called T. Wills. I have a letter, written in 1764, signed James Wills, who, by the subject of his communication, was evidently a painter also. Query, Whether there were two painters of this name flourishing about the same time? Were they father and son, or otherwise connected? When did they die, particularly T. Wills? PATONCE. [A notice of the Rev. James Wills, portrait painter, will be found in Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, by Allan Cunningham.] Replies. HUMAN SKIN TANNED, etc. (2nd S. ii. 68. 119. 157.) The Royal Infirmary at Bristol boasts of a valuable anatomical museum, formed by the late Mr. Richard Smith, who was senior surgeon of that institution from 1796 until his decease, which took place at Clifton, Jan. 24, 1843. He was one of the leading men of his day, as well known for his high professional character and attainments in metropolitan circles as he was in his own neighbourhood. In the west of England he might be termed "the Bristol Cheselden," quaint and curious, a frequent contributor on historical subjects to the Gentleman's Magazine, as also to Felix Farley's Journal, a local paper imbued with much of the spirit of Sylvanus Urban. His contributions to these serials exhibit neither inconsiderable merit nor inaccurate research. Amongst his peculiarities, Mr. Smith had almost a morbid curiosity in criminal cases; a trait of character that may be veiled as a love of forensic medicine. This is well seen in his museum, - a small but sombre apartment containing valuable collection of pathological and anatomical preparations. Amongst them, an assortment of calculi, well arranged and clearly catalogued, is second, I believe, to none in value and interest. The most striking feature, however, indicating the bias of the founder's mind, is the memorabilia of criminals who have expiated their crimes upon the scaffold, and contributed to science by yielding their bodies to the scalpel. Articulated skeletons of these seem to grin the more horribly from the juxtaposition of the fatal cap and rope. Whilst to complete the scene, relics of the victim lie near in the shape of fractured vertebra or battered and trephined skull. Amidst other subjects none is more interesting than that of John Horwood. He was a youth of eighteen, the first criminal hanged at Bristol New Drop, April 13, 1821, for the murder, under aggravated circumstances, of his sweetheart, Eliza Balsum, at Hanham, by hurling a stone at her. In a case against the wall of the museum hangs the skeleton of this malefactor. Near it lies a book compiled by Mr. Smith, evidently "con amore," in which are enshrined the most minute details of the murder. And I venture to say that a peep into it will repay the curious for the scrutinising research displayed, worthy a nobler theme. Cuttings from newsthe actual indictment; briefs of the counsel; correspondence, of which I give a specimen below; broad-sheets in the Catnach style, not excepting prints of the judge, the chaplain, pencil sketch of the corpse, chart of phrenological development, and disquisition, &c., altogether forming a collection that exhausts the repulsive papers: - A memorandum within the book sets forth that "the bones were macerated and the skin tanned at the infirmary." Bearing upon a topic that of late has been much before the public mind, whether, in the words of a defunct Edinburgh reviewer, capital punishment cannot be made "dull as well as deadly," may I insert the following correspondence which passed upon the occasion of Horwood's execution? It distinctly shows what dread, what thrilling fear, that sad sequel to an ignominious death, the dissecting-room, produced upon the lower manifestations of human character. The solicitors concerned in the above case, Messrs. Browne and Watson, made a feeling appeal to Mr. Smith to obtain a remission of the latter part of the sentence, as contained in the following copy of the receipt, &c., given to the sheriffs, for the body: "The delivery of Our Sovereign Lord the King's Gaol in the City and County of Bristol, of the Prisoners in the said Gaol being held in the Guildhall in and for the said City and Co., on Saturday the 2nd April, 1821, before George Hilhouse, Esq., Mayor; Sir Robt. Gifford, Knight, Recorder, and others their Associates Justices assigned, &c. "John Horwood, convictd of the wilful murder of Eliz. Balsum. "Let him be hanged by the neck until he shall be dead, and let his body be delivered to Mr. Richd. Smith, of the City of Bristol, Surgeon, to be dissectd and anatomized." "Received this 13th day of April, 1821, from Thomas Hassell and Rob'. Jenkins, Esqs., Sheriffs of the said City of Bristol, and Co. of the same City, the body of the above-named John Horwood, deceased, for the purposes mentioned in the above Fiat or sentence. RICHARD SMITH, Surgeon." A second appeal on behalf of the parents of Horwood elicited the following rejoinder : "Gentlemen, 15 April, 1821. "I have placed before the surgeons of the Infirmary your second letter respecting the body of John Horwood. We have in consequence reconsidered the matter in the most serious and deliberative manner; and I am under the unpleasant necessity of saying that we can see no reason for altering the opinion expressed to you in a former communication. The father and brother of the unfortunate malefactor have probably informed you that I have had with them at my house this morning a most painful interview, and certainly if I had permitted my feelings to have assumed the mastery over the sense of duty in this miserable affair, the tears of so respectable an old man would, as far as I was personally concerned, have prevailed and forced me to yield to his solicitations. I trust, however, that even this afflicted parent went away satisfied with the rectitude of the motives which alone actuated the surgeons, and convinced that they were prevented from being free agents by a due sense of the obligation due from them to their fellow-citizens. I need scarcely, gentlemen, point out to you, that although I am alone named in the order of the Court, yet I consider myself in trust for my brethren conjointly; and that I do not feel at liberty to act without their concurrence. Allow me also to observe that an attentive and unprejudiced consideration of the wording of the Warrant to the Sheriffs, and the guarded Receipt, which I was under the necessity of giving, appear to me imperative as to the fulfilment of the latter part of the sentence. It is, as you know, not merely for dissection that it was delivered to me by the and intent of which can scarcely be misunderstood. How Magistracy, but to be anatomized, the real meaning far the body might be legally given up for interment I shall not take upon me to determine (although it must be conceded that the Act of Parliament is very strongly featured), yet after the obligation incurred by the conditional Receipt given to Mr. Ody Hare, the Under-Sheriff, I cannot but feel myself morally bound to complete its intentions. It is therefore clear to me, that after having given to the Professional Students of Bristol, and to as many Gentlemen as may please to honour me with their presence, a summary course of Lectures, the remains ought to be formed into a skeleton, and deposited by the side of the two unfortunate Infanticides who after execution were delivered to the late Mr. Godfrey Lowe, for the same purpose a few years since. The Surgeons, Gentlemen, feel fully satisfied that you have on your part done only your duty in your strenuous endeavours to alleviate the mental sufferings of your client; and they trust that in return you will give them credit for acting upon no other principles than those which ought to actuate all persons holding public situations. σε Το "I remain, Gentlemen, "Your most obedient servant, RICHARD SMITH. "Messrs. Browne and Watson." Stratagem was resorted to in order to remove the body from the gaol; for the friends of the criminal had mustered in strong force, and lay in ambuscade, with a determination to rescue the body from the surgeons. Mr. Smith, in his MS. book, details very graphically the personal risk he ran in conveying the corpse to the infirmary. Here the senior surgeon, through its medium, exemplified the functions of the circulation and respiration in a course of lectures "ad populum." Churchdown. F. S. I find from an article in Chambers's Papers for the People, entitled "The Microscope and its Marvels," that at the meeting of the Microscopical Society, on April 26, 1848, a most curious paper was read by Mr. J. Quekett, upon the application of the microscope to a very singular sort of antiquarian research: "Early in the month of April, 1847, Mr. Quekett was asked by Sir Benjamin Brodie whether it were possible to determine if skin which had for many years been exposed to the air were human or not? He replied in the af |