MISCELLANEOUS.
Carillon.—We think we have answered your question before about carron oil, but as it may be out of print, we are glad to do so again. Carron oil is equal parts of olive oil and lime water well shaken together, and is employed as a remedy for burns. Some doctors add a very little laudanum to it. It was first employed at the Carron Ironworks, near Falkirk.
Enona.—1. A cartoon is a design drawn on strong paper in chalks or distemper, to be afterwards calked through, and transferred to the fresh plaster of a wall to be painted in fresco oil-colour or tapestry. The finest cartoons known are those executed by Raphael for Leo X. in 1515 and 1516 as patterns for tapestry. Each of them is about twelve feet high, is drawn with chalk on strong paper, and coloured in distemper by that master and his pupils. They were ten in number, but three have been lost. The seven you have seen at the South Kensington Museum were bought in Flanders by Rubens for our King Charles I., and we owe their preservation to Cromwell, who bought them from the King’s private collection for the country. They are thought to be the finest of Raphael’s works.—2. A cartouche is a different thing entirely, and you have mixed up the two perhaps from seeing both in the museums in London, where you have seen the latter applied to an elliptical oval on the ancient Egyptian monuments, and in papyri also, on which are hieroglyphic characters expressing the names and titles of Egyptian kings. In architecture a cartouche is a tablet for ornament or for an inscription, formed like a sheet of paper with its edges rolled up.
Dorothy.—If you be interested in the history and use of bells, you had better read North’s English Bells and Bell Lore, re-edited by the Rev. W. Beresford. The ancient “mote bell” was rung to assemble the people in cases of danger, or for public purposes, by command of Edward the Confessor. The “dole meadow bell” used to summon the parishioners to vestry meetings. The “storm bell” was appointed to “cause the fiends and wicked spirytes to cease of the movyng of the tempeste,” to which Bishop Latimer (martyr) made allusion in one of his sermons (published by the Parker Society). There was also the “common bell” and the “pancake bell” used at Shrovetide to summon people to confession. Besides these uses, certain bells were employed for the use of farming—calling the country-folk to seed-sowing, harvesting, and gleaning, and which were rung also on “Plough Monday.” The custom of ringing “joy bells” at coronations, royal birthdays, and weddings, is familiar to all, as well as the “passing bell” to announce a death, the tolling at funerals and executions, and the terror-inspiring “fire bell.” We cannot tell you more in our correspondence columns. Read the exhaustive work we have named on bell lore.
Eugenie.—The second Monday in July, 1940, will be the 8th. Wrinkles in the forehead are caused by raising the eyebrows, which draws the skin into lines and rolls. The only way to cure them is by leaving off making that special grimace, which makes you look not only both old and plain, but gives a silly and an unhappy expression.
Firenze.—Catafalco is an Italian word, meaning “a scaffold” or funeral canopy, and is applied to a temporary piece of woodwork decorated with painting and sculptures, representing a tomb, and employed in funeral solemnities. We have the word in French also, catafalque, which dates from the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
Paddy.—Jan. 13th, 1866, was a Saturday; Feb. 17th, 1864, was a Wednesday.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The famous duel between Castlereagh and Canning—those, unhappily, were still the days of duels in England—was supposed to have taken place because Canning had ousted Castlereagh from office. But on the authority of Lady Castlereagh, Sir W. Napier offered a different explanation. This was, that her husband might have been reinstated in office if only he would have agreed to “sacrifice the reputation of Sir John Moore.” Such a proposal was, as the stern old historian writes, “an insult well answered with a shot.”—Life of Sir Charles Napier, by Sir W. Napier.
[2] The Marquis of Londonderry, one of Moore’s later critics, wrote: “Perhaps the English army has produced some abler men than Sir John Moore; it has certainly produced many who, in point of military talent, were and are quite his equals; but it cannot, and perhaps never could, boast of one more beloved, not by his own personal friends alone, but by every individual that served under him.”
[3] This is the more remarkable an expression because, after the appointment of Sir Hew Dalrymple over his head in the end of August, Wellesley had written privately to Lord Castlereagh, expressing an earnest wish to leave Spain, for “I have been too successful with this army ever to serve with it in a subordinate situation with satisfaction to the person who shall command it, and, of course, not to myself.” To serve under Sir John Moore with that same army was plainly in his eyes a very different matter.