The annotator refers to Cic., lib. xxiv. ep. 4.:
"Quod reliquum est, sustenta te, mea Terentia, ut potes, honestissimè. Viximus: floruimus: non vitium nostrum, sed virtus nostra, nos afflixit. Peccatum est nullum, nisi quod non unâ animam cum ornamentis amisimus."—Edit. Orell., vol. iii. part i. p. 335.
However, it seems probable that Sir Thomas meant that this sentiment is rather to be gathered from Cicero's writings,—not enunciated in a single sentence.
H. C. K.
—— Rectory, Hereford.
Optical Query (Vol. vii., p. 430.).—In reply to the optical Query by H. H., I venture to suggest that a stronger gust of wind than usual might easily occasion the illusion in question, as I myself have frequently found in looking at the fans on the tops of chimneys. Or possibly the eyes may have been confused by gazing on the revolving blades, just as the tongue is frequently influenced in its accentuation by pronouncing a word of two syllables in rapid articulations.
F. F. S.
Oxford.
Cross and Pile (Vol. vii., p.487.).—Here is another explanation at least as satisfactory as some of the previous ones:
"The word coin itself is money struck on the coin or head of the flattened metal, by which word coin or head is to be understood the obverse, the only side which in the infancy of coining bore the stamp. Thence the Latin cuneus, from cune or kyn, the head.
"This side was also called pile, in corruption from poll, a head, not only from the side itself being the coin or head, but from its being impressed most commonly with some head in contradistinction to the reverse, which, in latter times, was oftenest a cross. Thence the vulgarism, cross or pile, poll, head."—Cleland's Specimen of an Etymological Vocabulary, p. 157.