"An elegant marble pillar was erected by Mary as a tribute of her affection, to mark the spot where the heart of Francis II. was deposited in Orleans Cathedral."
L. B. M.
Greek Epigram (Vol. viii., p. 622.).—The epigram, or rather epigrams, desired by your correspondent G. E. Frere are most probably those which stand as the twelfth and thirteenth in the ninth division of the Anthologia Palatina (vol. ii. p. 61., ed. Tauchnitz). Their subjects are identical with that quoted by you, which stands as the eleventh in the same collection. The two best lines of Epigram XIII. are—
"Ἀνέρα τις λιπόγυιον ὑπὲρ νώτοιο λιπαυγὴς
Ἦγε, πὸδας χρήσας, ὄμματα χρησάμενος."
P. J. F. Gantillon.
Mackey's "Theory of the Earth" (Vol. viii. pp. 468. 565.).—
"Died, on Saturday se'night, at Doughty's Hospital in this city, Samson Arnold Mackey, aged seventy-eight years. The deceased was born at Haddiscoe, and was a natural son of Captain Samson Arnold of Lowestoft. He has been long known to many of the scientific persons of Norwich, and was remarkable for the originality of his views upon the very abstruse subject of mythological astronomy, in which he exhibited great sagacity, and maintained his opinions with extraordinary pertinacity. He received but a moderate education; was put apprentice to a shoemaker at the age of eleven, served his time, and for many years afterwards was in the militia. He did not again settle in Norwich until 1811, when he hired the attic storey of a small house in St. Paul's, where he followed his business and pursued his favourite studies. About 1822 he published his first part of Mythological Astronomy, and gave lectures to a select few upon the science in general. In 1825 he published his Theory of the Earth, and several pamphlets upon the antiquity of the Hindoos. His room, in which he worked, took his meals, slept, and gave his lectures, was a strange exhibition of leather, shoes, wax, victuals, sketches of sphinxes, zodiacs, planispheres; together with orreries of his own making, geological maps and drawings, illustrative of the Egyptian and Hindoo Mythologies. He traced all the geological changes to the different inclinations of the earth's axis to the plane of its orbit, and was fully persuaded that about 420,000 years ago, according to his theory, when the poles of the earth were last in that position, the geological phenomena now witnessed were produced. From his singular habits, he was of course looked upon with wonder by his poor neighbours, and those better informed were inclined to annoy him as to his religious opinions. He had a hard struggle of late years to obtain subsistence, and his kind friend and patron the late Mr. Moneyment procured for him the asylum in which he died. He held opinions widely different to most men; but it must not be forgotten that, humble as he was, his scientific acquirements gained him private interviews with the late Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Somerset, and many learned men in the metropolis."
The above is taken from the Norwich Mercury of August 12, 1843.
Trivet Allcock.