Minor Notes.
Bishop Bedell.
—This divine, to remind him of the need he had of being cleansed and purified in heart by the Spirit, chose an ingenious device, consisting of a flaming crucible, with a Hebrew motto, signifying, "Take from me all my tin," in allusion to Isaiah i. 25. The reason for selecting these particular words was, that the Hebrew word for tin is bedil.
CLERICUS (D.)
Foreign Guide-books.
—The samples of foreign English preserved in your pages are nearly equalled in ludicrous effect by the novel information often found in guide-books and manuals published on the continent for the use of strangers in England. Our metropolis is an inexhaustible subject of blunders on the part of the compilers of these works, of whom not a few deserve to rank with the Frenchman who, having heard something of a coal duty in connexion with St. Paul's, gravely told his readers that the cathedral was built on sea-coal.
The following extract is from a work entitled Londres et ses Environs, Paris, 2 vols. with plates: the compiler states that, having resided fifteen years in London, "il est, plus que tout autre, en état d'en parler avec certitude."
"Ce gouffre majestueux a englouti la ville de Westminster, le bourg de Southwark, et quarante-cinq villages, dont les noms, conservés dans les différens quartiers qu'ils occupaient, sont—
Mora
Islington
Falgate
Mile End New Town
Ratcliffe
The Hermitage
The Strand
Shoreditch
White Chapel
Stepney
Wapping
The Minories
S. James
Bloomsbury
Soho
Saffron Hill
Lambeth math
The Grange
Finsbury
Hoxton
The Spital
Poplar
Shadwell
S. Catherine's
Charing Cross
S. Giles in the Fields
Holborn
Kennington
Horsley Down
Wenlaxbarn
Wauxhall
Newington Butts
Rotherhite
Clerkenwell
Norton
Mile End Old Town
Limehouse
East Smith Field
S. Clement Danes
Knightsbridge
Portpool
Lambeth
Bermondsey
Paddington, et
Mary-le-Bone."
Vol. i. pp. 39, 40.
We have here a strange admixture of the names of parishes, streets, and prebends; amongst the last are Portpool, Mora, and Wenlake's Barn, the precise locality of which many old Londoners would be puzzled to state.
I think the following specimen of foreigners' English, which appeared as the address of a huge package received at the Exhibition, is worth adding to your collection:—
"Sir Vyat and Sir Fox Henderson Esqvire
Grate Exposition
Parc of Hide
at London.
"Glace
to be posid upright."
JAMES T. HAMMACK.
Wearing Gloves in Presence of Royalty (Vol. i., p. 366.; Vol. ii., pp.165. 467.).
—Hull, in his History of the Glove Trade, says that Charles IV., King of Spain, was so much under the influence of any lady who wore white kid gloves, that the use of them at Court was strictly prohibited. He refers the reader to the Mémoires de la Duchesse d'Abrantès, tome viii. p. 35.
PHILIP S. KING.
Errors of Poets.
—In Vol. iv., p. 150., amongst the "Errors of Painters" a picture is noticed, in which "the five wise and five foolish virgins have increased into two sevens." A similar mistake is made by Longfellow in his last poem, The Golden Legend, p. 219., where one of the characters says:
"Here we stand as the Virgins Seven,
For our celestial bridegroom yearning;
Our hearts are lamps for ever burning,
With a steady and unwavering flame,
Pointing upward for ever the same,
Steadily upward toward the Heaven."
H. C. DE ST. CROIX.