NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

The St. George’s Company is now distinctly in existence; formed of about twenty accepted Companions, to whose number I am daily adding, and to whom the entire property of the Company legally belongs, and who have the right at any moment to depose the Master, and dispose of the property in any manner they may think fit. Unless I believed myself capable of choosing persons for Companions who might be safely entrusted with this power I should not have endeavoured to form the society at all. Every one of these Companions has a right to know the names and addresses of the rest, which the Master of the Company must furnish him with; and of course the roll of the names, which will be kept in Corpus Christi College, is their legal certificate. I do not choose to begin this book at the end of the year, but at the beginning of the next term it will be done; and as our lawyer’s paper, revised, is now—15th December—in my hands, and approved, the 1st of January will see us securely constituted. I give below the initials of the Companions accepted before the 10th of this month, thinking that my doing so will be pleasing to some of them, and right, for all.

Initials of Companions accepted before 10th December, 1875. I only give two letters, which are I think as much indication as is at present desirable:— [[26]]

1. D. L. 2. F. C. 3. L. B. 4. B. B. 5. F. T. 6. R. T. 7. G. S. 8. B. A. 9. A. H. 10. T. D. 11. M. K. 12. S. B. 13. G. A. 14. A. H. 15. W. S. 16. W. S. 17. J. B. 18. B. G. 19. H. L. 20. J. F. 21. J. M. 22. R. S. 23. H. C. 24. J. T. 25. J. S.

This ‘Fors’ is already so much beyond its usual limits, and it introduces subject-matter so grave, that I do not feel inclined to go into further business details this month; the rather because in the February ‘Fors,’ with the accounts of the Company, I must begin what the Master of the Company will be always compelled to furnish—statement of his own personal current expenditure. And this will require some explanation too long for to-day. I defer also the Wakefield correspondence, for I have just got fresh information about the destruction of Wakefield chapel, and have an election petition to examine:

I. Our notes for the year 1876 may, I think, best begin with the two pieces of news which follow; and which, by order of Atropos, also followed each other in the column of the ‘Morning Advertiser,’ from which I print them.

For, though I am by this time known to object to Advertisement in general, I beg the public to observe that my objection is only to bought or bribed Advertisement (especially if it be Advertisement of one’s self). But that I hold myself, and this book of mine, for nothing better than Morning, Noon, and [[27]]Evening Advertisers, of what things appear verily noteworthy in the midst of us. Whereof I commend the circumstances of the death, beneath related, very particularly to the attention of the Bishops of London and York.

Shocking Death from Starvation.—Last night Mr. Bedford, the Westminster coroner, held an inquest at the Board-room, Dean Street, Soho, on the body of Thomas Gladstone, aged 58, of 43, King Street, Seven Dials, a shoemaker, who was found dead on Thursday last.