I have to acknowledge a quite magnificent gift of Japanese inlaid work to our Sheffield Museum, from my kind friend Mr. Henry Willett, of Arnold House, Brighton. A series of some fifty pieces was offered by him for our selection: but I have only accepted a tithe of them, thinking that the fewer examples of each school we possess, the better we shall learn from them. Three out of the five pieces I have accepted are of quite unsurpassable beauty, and the two others of extreme interest. They are sent to the Curator at Sheffield. [[127]]

[1] Psalm lxviii. 31; lxxxiii. 7 and 8; lxxxvii. 4; Isaiah xlv. 14. I am not sure of my interpretation of the 87th Psalm; but, as far as any significance exists in it to our present knowledge, it can only be of the power of the Nativity of Christ to save Rahab the harlot, Philistia the giant, Tyre the trader, and Ethiopia the slave. [↑]

[2] Letter XVII., p. 6. [↑]

[3] You may indeed dip softly into the ground and rise gradually out of it; but this will give you not a clear, but an infinitely graduated excision, exquisite in drawing, but not good for writing. [↑]

[4] I take the title of this relief from Mr. Parker’s catalogue, not being certain of the subject myself, and rather conceiving it to be Latona with Apollo. [↑]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I. Affairs of the Company.

I give on next two pages our banker’s account to 14th March of this year. Calling this ‘Account B,’ and that given to the end of last year, in last Fors, ‘Account A,’ the following abstract of both is, I hope, accurate.

By Account A: £ s. d.
Cash paid into bank 653 1 0
Interest accumulated 780 5 6
By Account B:
Cash paid into bank 324 11 1
Interest 119 0 0
Giving total to our credit 1876 17 7
Per contra, we have—
Petty expenses 0 10 9
Purchase of £1000 Consols 918 15 0
Cheques to myself 800 0 0
Balance 157 11 10
1876 17 7