3. If so, in whose possession is the stone at this present time?
M. A.
Mammon.—Perhaps some of your readers could refer me to some work containing information in reference to the following allegation of Barnes, on Matt. vi. 24.:
"Mammon is a Syriac word, a name given to an idol worshipped as the god of riches. It has the same meaning as Plutus among the Greeks. It is not known that the Jews even formally worshipped this idol, but they used the word to denote wealth."
My question relates to the passages in Italics.
B. H. C.
Derivation of Wellesley.—In a note to the lately published Autobiographic Sketches of Thomas De Quincey, I find (p. 131.) the following passage:
"It had been always known that some relationship existed between the Wellesleys and John Wesley. Their names had in fact been originally the same; and the Duke of Wellington himself, in the earlier part of his career, when sitting in the Irish House of Commons, was always known to the Irish journals as Captain Wesley. Upon this arose a natural belief, that the aristocratic branch of the house had improved the name into Wellesley. But the true process of change had been precisely the other way. Not Wesley had been expanded into Wellesley, but inversely, Wellesley had been contracted by household usage into Wesley. The name must have been Wellesley in its earliest stage, since it was founded upon a connexion with Wells Cathedral."
May I ask what this connexion was, and whence the authority for the statement? Had the illustrious Duke's adoption of his title from another town in Somersetshire anything to do with it?
J. M.