H. G. T.
Writing-paper.—I have long been subject to what, in my case, I feel to be a serious annoyance. For the last twenty years I have been unable to purchase any letter-paper which I can write upon with comfort and satisfaction. At first, I was allowed to choose between plain and hot-pressed; but now I find it impossible to meet with any, which is not glazed or smeared over with some greasy coating, which renders it very disagreeable for use with a common quill—and I cannot endure a steel pen. My style of writing, which is a strong round Roman hand, is only suited for a quill.
Can any of your correspondents put me in the way of procuring the good honest letter-paper which I want? I have in vain applied to the stationers in every town within my reach. Would any of the paper-mills be disposed to furnish me with a ream or two of the unglazed, plain, and unhotpressed paper which I am anxious to obtain?
Whilst I am on this subject, I will take occasion to lament the very great inferiority of the paper generally which is employed in printing books. It may have a fine, glossy, smooth appearance, but its texture is so poor and flimsy, that it soon frays or breaks, without the greatest care; and many an immortal work is committed to a miserably frail and perishable material!
A comparison of the books which were printed a century ago, with those of the present day, will, I conceive, fully establish the complaint which I venture to make; and I would particularly remark upon the large Bibles and Prayer Books which are now printed at the Universities for the use of our churches and chapels, which are exposed to much wear and tear, and ought, therefore, to be of more substantial and enduring texture, but are of so flimsy, brittle, and cottony a manufacture, that they require renewing every three or four years.
"Laudator temporis acti."
Little Casterton (Rutland) Church.—Within the communion rails in the church of Little Casterton, Rutland, there lies in the pavement (or did lately) a stone, hollowed out like the basin or drain of a piscina, which some church-hunters have supposed to be a piscina, and have noticed as a great singularity. The stone, however, did not originally belong to this church; it was brought from the neighbouring site of the desecrated church of Pickworth, by the late Reverend Richard Twopeny, who held the rectory of Little Casterton upwards of sixty years; he had long seen it lying neglected among the ruins, and at length brought it to his own church to save it from destruction.
It may be interesting to some of your readers to learn that in the chancel of Little Casterton are monumental brasses of an armed male and a female figure, the latter on the sinister side, with the following inscription in black letter:—
"Hic jacet Dns Thomas Burton miles quondam dūs de Tolthorp ac ecclesiæ.... patronus qui obiit kalendas Augusti.... dna Margeria uxor ejus sinistris quor
, aīabus ppicietur deus amen."
R. C. H.