Selling a Wife (Vol. vii., pp. 429. 602.).—There can be no question that this offence is an indictable misdemeanor. I made, at the time, a memorandum of the following case:
"West Riding Yorkshire Sessions, June 28, 1837. Joshua Jackson, convicted of selling his wife, imprisoned for one month with hard labour."
S. R.
Chiswick.
Impossibilities of History (Vol. viii., p. 72.).—St. Bernard, according to Gibbon, lived from 1091 to 1153. Henry I., who did rebel against his father, was twelve years older than the Saint, and ascended the throne at the age of twenty-one in the year 1100, when the Saint was nine years old. The descent from the devil alludes, I should think, to Robert le Diable, the father of the Conqueror. The historian of The Tablet found the authority most probably in some theatrical review or fly-leaf of the libretto.
J. H. L.
Lad and Lass (Vol. vii., p. 56.).—Lass, Hickes (quoted by Lye in Junius) says, was originally written, and is a corruption of laddess; thus, we may suppose laddess, ladse, lass: and lad may correlate with the Gr. ἀγωγὸς, a leader, so familiar to us in the sneered at pæd-agogue, i. e. the boy-leader. The lad, from the Anglo-Saxon lædian, to lead (says Junius), is the leăd—"One who, on account of his tender years, is under a leader, a guide, a director."
We apply the common expression "He is yet in leading strings" to him who has not strength or courage to go alone, to act independently for himself.
Q.