Replies to Minor Queries.
The Countess of Pembroke's Letter (Vol. i., pp. 28. 119. 154.; Vol. vii., p. 154.).—None of your correspondents seem to be aware that the paper in the World (No. XIV. April 5, 1753), in which this questioned letter first appeared, was written by Horace Walpole, and was afterwards reproduced by him in his Royal and Noble Authors. These facts may help to guide inquirers,
but they seem to me not to testify much for the authenticity of the piece. This, among many publications in the World, would certainly prove nothing; but Walpole's venturing to reproduce it in an acknowledged work to which he attached considerable importance, is no doubt of some weight.
C.
Ethnology of England (Vol. vii., p. 135.).—In reference to that portion of the Query by Ethnologicus which asks "Whether it is yet clearly settled that there are types of the heads of Ancient Britons, Saxons, Danes, and other races, to be referred to as standards or examples of the respective crania of those people?" I beg to say that beneath the chancel of the church of St. Leonard, Hythe, there is a crypt containing a vast number of skulls and other human bones, which, according to Jeake, the historian of the Cinque Ports, are—
"Supposed by some to be gathered at the shore after a great sea-fight and slaughter of the French and English on that coast; whose carcases, or their bones, after the consumption of the flesh, might be cast up there, and so gathered and reserved for memorandum."
Speaking of these relics, Walker, in his Physiology, says:
"These skulls at Hythe are not of one race, either Saxon or British, but of several; two forms of skull, very distinct from each other, predominate: one, a long narrow skull, greatly resembling the Celtic of the present day; the other, a short broad skull, greatly resembling the Gothic.... Another kind of skulls, fewer in number, are evidently Roman skulls."
Robert Wright.
Drake the Artist (Vol. vi., p. 555.).—Searching a series of catalogues of the Society of Artists of Great Britain, from 1760 to 1780, I find that Mr. Drake at York, F.S.A. (Fellow of that Society), in 1773 exhibited at their New Room, near Exeter Change in the Strand,—