Ductor Dubitantium.—The Judge alluded to by Jeremy Taylor in the passage quoted by A.T. (Vol. ii., p. 325.), was Chief-Justice Richardson; but the place where the outrage was committed was not Ludlow, as stated by the eloquent divine, but Salisbury, as appears from the following marginal note in Dyer's Reports, p. 1886—a curious specimen of the legal phraseology of the period:—
"Richardson, C.J. de C.B. at Assizes at Salisbury in Summer 1631 fuit assault per Prisoner la condemne pur Felony; que puis son condemnation ject un Brickbat a le dit Justice, que narrowly mist. Et pur ceo immediately fuit Indictment drawn pur Noy envers le Prisoner, et son dexter manus ampute et fixe al Gibbet, sur que luy mesme immediatement hange in presence de Court."
EDWARD FOSS.
Aërostation (Vol. ii., p. 317.).—The account published by Lunardi of his aërial voyage, alluded to by M., is, in the copy I have seen, entitled
"An Account of the First Aërial Voyage in Britain, in a series of letters to his guardian, the Chevalier Gherardo Compagni, written under the impressions of the various events that affected the undertaking, by Vicent Lunardi, Esq., Secretary to the Neapolitan Ambassador. 'A non esse nec fuisse non datur argumentum ad non posse.' Second edition, London: printed for the Author, and sold at the Panther; also by the Publisher J. Bell, at the British Library, Strand, and at Mr. Molini's, Woodstock Street, MDCCLXXXIV."
The book contains printed copies of the depositions of witnesses who beheld Lunardi's descent; and Mr. Baker, who, as a magistrate, took those depositions on oath, to establish what he thought so wonderful a fact, erected on the spot where the balloon descended, in a field near Colliers End, in the parish of Standon, Herts, on the left of the high road from London to Cambridge, a stone with the following inscription on a copper plate. It is still legible, though somewhat defaced. It is engraved in lines of unequal length, but to save your space I have not adhered to those divisions.
"Let posterity know, and knowing, be astonished, that on the fifteenth day of September, 1784, Vincent Lunardi of Lucca, in Tuscany, the first aërial traveller in Britain, mounting from the Artillery Ground in London, traversing the regions of the air for two hours and fifteen minutes, in this spot revisited the earth. On this rude monument for ages be recorded, that wondrous enterprise, successfully achieved by the powers of chemistry and the fortitude of man, that improvement in science, which the great Author of all knowledge, patronising by His providence the inventions of mankind, hath graciously permitted to their benefit and His own eternal glory."
COLL. ROYAL SOC.
Gwyn's London and Westminster (Vol. ii., p. 297.).—A reference to Mr. Croker's Boswell (last edit. 1847, p. 181.) may best satisfy § N. "Gwyn," says Mr. Croker, "proposed the principle, and in many instances the details, of the most important improvements which have been made in the metropolis in our day." Was this copied into the Literary Gazette?
Mr. Sydney Smirke speaks favourably of Gwyn's favourite project, "the formation of a permanent Board or Commission for superintending and controlling the architectural embellishments of London." (Suggestions, &c., 8vo. 1834, p. 23.)