A note on that case may not be uninteresting, as showing the vast increase of a fund originally small.
Lady Mico, in 1670, gave 1000l. to redeem poor slaves. In 1686 this fund was laid out in the purchase of land.
In 1827 an information was filed against Mr. Gibson and others and at that time the rental of the purchased land amounted to something like 3000l. a year, and the trustees had accumulated upwards of 115,000l. Consols.
Trustees were appointed in 1834, and their office is No. 20. Buckingham Street, Strand. The funds are applied towards the education of our emancipated slaves.
Q.D.
[Cannibals].—Your correspondent W. (Vol. i., p. 186.) will field the origin of this word in Stillingfleet's Origines Sacrae, Part II. Book i. c. i., where there are traced the gradations observed by travellers in the savagery of the several natives of America. Has it been recorded of any people in Europe, Asia, or Africa, that they were addicted to the practice of scalping?
T.J.
[Symbols of the four Evangelists].—The misappropriation of the four faces of the cherubim, originally designed to shadow forth the incarnate Deity, to the four evangelists, with whom these emblematic representations are still, as anciently, associated in architectural decorations and heraldic bearings, appear to have originated, among the early Christians, in the reverence with which they regarded the four gospels. JARLZBERG (Vol. i., p. 385.) explains why the lion is assigned to St. Mark, and desires to know the reasons assigned for the three other Evangelists' emblems.
"Aquila", says Aringhi, "dignissimum ilium ac lynceum in arcanarum rerum ac mysteriorum sublimitate speculatorem, Joannem Evangelistam sublimi velocium pennarum symbolo portendit."
The ox, according to the same author, has been assigned as well to St. Matthew as to St. Luke, as all laborious ministers of the gospel are aptly represented by the "animal natum tolerare labores."