Minor Notes.
Curious Inscription.
—I obtained the following inscription from a person in the country, and you wish to make a "note" of it, it is perfectly at your service. The arrangement of the letters is curious.
"Bene.
At. ht Hiss to
Ne LI esca Theri
Neg —— Ray. C. Hanged.
F ..... Roma bvs. y. L.
if et oli .... Fele SS. C.
la. YB: year than. D.C.
La Ys —— he Go ..... th
Erp —— E. L F bvtn
ows H e'st
Urn E D T odv Sth
E R
Se ==== Lf.
An old Record.
J. H. W......
Birch Hill, May, 1844."
R. H.
Glass in Windows formerly not a Fixture.
—In Brooke's Abridgement, tit. "Chatteles," it appears that in the 21st Hen. VII., A.D. 1505, it was held that though the frame-work of the windows belonged to the heir, the glass was the property of the executors, and might therefore be removed by them, "quar le meason est perfite sauns le glasse." In A.D. 1599 Lord Coke informs us it was in the Common Pleas "resolved per totam curiam, that glass annexed to windows by nails, or in any other manner, could not be removed; for without glass it is no perfect house."
J. O. M.
D'Israeli: Pope and Goldsmith.
—Mr. D'Israeli congratulates himself with much satisfaction, in his Essay on the Literary Character, both in his Preface, p. xxix., and in the text, p. 187. vol. i., in having written this immortal sentence:
"The defects of great men are the consolation of the dunces."
—more particularly as it appears Lord Byron had "deeply underscored it." Perhaps he was unaware that Pope, in a letter to Swift, Feb. 16, 1733, had said:
"A few loose things sometimes fall from men of wit by which censorious fools judge as ill of them as they possibly can, for their own comfort."
And that Goldsmith says:
"The folly of others is ever most ridiculous to those who are themselves most foolish."—Citizen of the World.
JAMES CORNISH.