What say you, Mr. Editor, to such subscribing parties as, among others, "Grinling Gibbons, Michael Dahl, J. Closterman, and Christopher Wren?" I cannot remember more, but I think "Alex. Verrio" was among them.
Mem. the second: as entries in a sort of journal:
"That our steward, John Chicheley, Esquire, gave us this day a Westphalia Ham, which had been omitted in his entertainment on St. Luke's day."
Again:
"Paid and spent at Spring Gardens, by Knightsbridge, forfeiture £3 15 shgs."
Why, Mr. Editor, here are the new Roxburgh Revels of the Knights of the Brush and Palette. And now that the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day is expected to take out his diploma, and the ex-Premier is to be the new Professor of Perspective, vice the author of the Fallacies of Hope, it becomes a question of prevailing interest, which I commend to the research of your dilettanti querists. It may be a thread of connexion with those stores of precious materials obtained by Walpole from the widow of that persevering investigator George Virtue.
J. H. A.
THE RABBIT AS A SYMBOL.
The 29th vol. of the Archæologia contains an interesting "description of a monumental effigy of Richard Cœur de Lion, recently discovered in the cathedral of Notre Dame at Rouen," by Alfred Way, Esq., who, with his usual precision, has noticed what he very properly calls "some singular details" beneath the figure of the lion crouching at the king's feet; among these details is "the head of a rabbit[1] peeping out of its burrow, and, a little above, a dog warily watching the mouth of the hole." Mr. Way adds:
"I have met with nothing among the accessory ornaments of monumental sculpture analogous to this; and though convinced that what in itself may appear a trifling detail, was not placed here without design, I am quite at a loss to conjecture what could have been its import."