"Et Romandiolam quæ tunc caput italiæ erit in eurola civitate coronam accipiet ecce prælia et mortalitatis quæ non fuerunt ab origine mundi neque erunt usque in finem quia illic congregabuntur ab omni natione.
"Unus eorum vincet et ibit in elephantem: et ibi ponet sedem antiquam et declarabitur quia fiet postea unus pastor in ecclesia Dei recipiet utramque ecclesiam cardinalium cum maximâ pace et prædictus sponsus de dignitate columbinarum assumetur... Tunc temporanee ecclesie et civitatis et dignitati columbinarum in romandiola dabuntur et sua operatione fiet concorditer pax et unitas prædictorum. Et prædictus rex diu regnabit in regno suo: et deponentur omnes tyranni de ecclesia Dei et sub nomine regis gubernabuntur omnia: et universitas sanctorum credet in eligendum tanquam verum sponsum et pastorem prædictum. Et non erit amplius scisma usque ad tempora antichristi. Et fiet passagium per prædictum regem et gentes armorum quas secum ducet: et tunc fiet quasi conversio generalis ad fidem Christi per leonem magnum et regem prædictum quàm qui tunc in romandiola: et semper gaudebunt quia erunt amici et perpetui."
W. S.
Denton.
Cæsarius, &c.
—No facts have yet occurred to convince me but that all prophecies are stuff; by no means excepting those which Dr. Gregory printed in Blackwood for 1850, and from which (more strange) he is unweaned in 1851. Seeing that you have reprinted (Vol. iv., p. 471.) the prophecy falsely ascribed to that ancient Latin father, Cæsarius Arelatensis, I beg leave to mention that I published in the British Magazine for 1846 an historical and chronological explanation of that modern forgery, as well as of the far more ancient predictions ascribed to Queen Basina. Thomas of Ercildoun was anterior in date to the pseudo-Cæsarius, and borrowed the idea of his French revolution from Basina's, if, indeed, that prophecy be authentically from his pen, of which the proofs are very slender. See it quoted in Walter Scott's Poet. Works, vi. p. 236., ed. 1820.
I wish to be informed in what sense, and for what reason, Walter Scott in the same page calls the prophecy-man Robert Fleming, "Mass Robert Fleming."
A. N.
Tripos (Vol. iv., p. 484.).
—The original tripos, from which the Cambridge class lists have derived their names, was a three-legged stool, on which on Ash Wednesday a Bachelor of one or two years' standing (called therefrom the Bachelor of the Stool) used formerly to take his seat, and play the part of public disputant in the quaint proceedings which accompanied admission to the degree of B.A. In course of time the name was transferred from the stool to him that sat on it, and the disputant was called the Tripos; and thence by successive steps it passed to the day when the three-legged stool became "for the nonce" a post of honour; then to the lists published on that day, containing the seniority of commencing B.A.s arranged according to the pleasure of the Proctors; and ultimately it obtained the enlarged meaning now universally recognised, according to which it stands for the examination whether in mathematics, classics, moral or physical science, as well as the list by which the result of that examination is made known.