The Cambridge senate-house is called "Curia," and therefore it may be supposed that "Petty Cury" means "parva curia," from some court-leet or court-baron formerly held there; the town-hall is at the end of it to this day. The only objection to the above is, that in the Caius map of Cambridge, A.D. 1574, now in the British Museum, Petty Curie is a large street even then, whilst neither town-hall nor senate-house exist.
J. EASTWOOD.
Surely there can be little doubt that the name of this street at Cambridge is a corruption from the French "petite écurie." We knew little enough about such matters when I was an undergraduate there; but still, I think, we could have solved this mystery. Might I be permitted to suggest that as the court stables at Versailles were called "les petites écuries," to distinguish them from the king's, which were styled "les grandes écuries," although they exactly resembled them, and contained accommodation for five hundred horses; so the street in question may have contained some of the fellows' stables, which were called "les petites écuries," to distinguish them from the masters'. Should this supposition be correct, it would seem to imply that at one time the French language was not altogether ignored at Cambridge.
H. C.
Workington.
THE WORD "RACK" IN THE "TEMPEST."—THE NEBULAR THEORY.
(Vol. iii., p. 218.; Vol. iv., p. 37.)
MR. HICKSON seems to court opinion as to the justness of his interpretation of rack. I therefore express my total and almost indignant dissent from it.
Luckily, neither in the proposition itself, nor in the manner in which it is advocated, is there anything to disturb my previous conviction as to the true meaning of this word (which, in the well-known passage in the Tempest, is, beyond all doubt, "haze" or "vapour"), since few things would be more distasteful to me than to encounter any argument really capable of throwing doubt upon the reading of a passage I have long looked upon as one of the most marvellous instances of philosophical depth of thought to be met with, even in Shakspeare,—one of those astonishing speculations, in advance of his age, that now and then drop from him as from the lips of a child inspired,—wherein the grandeur of the sentiment is so out of all proportion to the simplicity and absence of pretension with which it is introduced, that the reader, not less surprised than delighted, is scarcely able to appreciate the full meaning until after long and careful consideration.
It is only lately that the nebular theory of condensation has been advanced, for the purpose of speculating upon the probable formation of planetary bodies. Yet it is a subject that possesses a strange coincidence with this passage of Shakspeare's Tempest.
Perhaps the best elucidation I can give of it will be to cite a certain passage in Dr. Nichols' Architecture of the Heavens, which happens to bear a rather remarkable, although I believe an accidental, resemblance to Shakspeare's words: accidental, because if Dr. Nichols had this passage of the Tempest present to his mind, when writing in a professedly popular and familiar style, he would scarcely have omitted allusion to it, especially as it would have afforded a peculiarly happy illustration of his subject.