"Peccavi," I have Scinde (Vol. viii, p. 490.).—Your correspondent Mr. G. Lloyd, who says he does "not know on what authority" it is stated that "the old and lamented warrior, Sir Charles Napier, wrote on the conquest of Scinde, Peccavi!" is informed that the sole author of the despatch was Mr. Punch.
Cuthbert Bede, B.A.
In a note touching these well-known words, Mr. G. Lloyd says, "It is also stated, I do not know on what authority, that the old and lamented warrior, Sir Charles Napier, wrote on the conquest of Scinde, Peccavi!" The author of Democritus in London, with the Mad Pranks and Comical Conceits of Motley and Robin Good-Fellow, thus alludes to this saying in that work. I presume he had good authority for so doing:
Sir P. "What exclaim'd the gallant Napier,
Proudly flourishing his rapier!
To the army and the navy,
When he conquer'd Scinde? 'Peccavi!'"
A Subscriber.
Raffaelle's Sposalizio (Vol. vii., p. 595.; Vol. viii., p. 61.).—The reason why the ring is placed on
the third finger of the right hand of the Blessed Virgin in Raffaelle's "Sposalizio" at Milan, and in Ghirlandais's frescoe of the same subject in the Santa Croce at Florence, is to be found in the fact that the right hand has always been considered the hand of power or dignity, and the left hand of inferiority or subjection. A married woman always wears her ring on the third finger of the left hand to signify her subjection to her husband. But it has been customary among artists to represent the Blessed Virgin with the ring on the right hand, to signify her superiority to St. Joseph from her surpassing dignity of Mother of God. Still she is not always represented so, for in Beato Angelico's painting of the marriage of Mary and Joseph she receives the ring on her left hand. See woodcut in Mrs. Jameson's Legends of Madonna, p. 170. In the Marriage of the Blessed Virgin by Vanloo, in the Louvre, she also receives the ring on the left hand. Giotto, Taddeo Gaddi, Perugino, &c., have painted the "Sposalizio," but I have not copies by me to refer to.