518 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[Dec. 29. 1855. 



lie" is of course a cope. The broad collar of gold 

 plate is the orphrey of the cope, and is fastened 

 as usual by the morse. The " broad green girdle 

 passing under the left hand" is not easy to deter- 

 mine, from the want of more accurate description. 

 It may be a maniple, or a stole, or an actual 

 girdle ; but the palm-branch at once marks out 

 the saint to have been a martyr. We have then 

 in this personage at once a Pope, a saint, and a 

 martyr ; and there can be little doubt that it is 

 intended to represent St. Xystus. I remember 

 to have seen a painting of the ordination of St. 

 Laurence as deacon, by that holy Pope ; and the 

 description corresponds in great measure with 

 his figure in that painting. 



F. C. HusENBETH, D.D., Compiler 

 of the Emblems of Saints. 



Conversations with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Sfc. 

 (Vol. xii., pp. 346. 413.). — Your courteous cor- 

 respondent E. G. R. has presented me with the 

 book entitled Conversations at Cambridge. A 

 very cursory perusal has satisfied me that it is not 

 the book I asked after. In order to identify it, 

 I may state that the conversation with Words- 

 worth, therein related, took place at Rydal 

 Mount ; and in the course of it, Wordsworth al- 

 luded, with great good-nature, to certain reviews 

 of his works, until Mrs. Wordsworth made a re- 

 mark intimating her agreement with some ad- 

 verse criticism ; when the poet became greatly 

 irritated, and began rebutting the criticisms which 

 he had previously appeared to agree with. The 

 author tells that, too, of Wordsworth's vanity in 

 illustrating his remarks by apposite citations from 

 his own poems ; prefacing each extract by the 

 words, *' as I have somewhere written." 



May I beg the favour of farther assistance in 

 recovering the title of the book ? 



C. Mansfield Ingleby. 



Pompey's Playing Tables (Vol. xii., p. 428.). — 

 The passage inquired for by ju. may be found in 

 Pliny's Historia Naturalis, lib. xxxvii. c. 2. torn. v. 

 p. 359. (edit. Par., 1685). His words are : 



" Ergo tertio triumpho, quem de ph'atis, Asia, Ponto, 

 gentibusqiie et regibus, M. Pisone, M. Messala consuli- 

 bus [b.c. G1], pridie Kalend. Octobris, die natalis sui 

 egit, transtulit Alveum cum tesseris lusorium, e gemmis 

 duabus, latum pedes tres, longum pedes quatuor; et ne 

 quis de ea re dubitet, nulla gemmarum magaitudine hodie 

 prope ad banc amplitudinem accedent, in eo fuit Luna 

 aurea pondo xxx., lectos tricliniares tres," &c. 



Dr. Philemon Holland, in his Tra?isIation of 

 Pliny, printed in 1601, renders the words " J.Z- 

 veum cum tesseris lusorium," by " chesse-board, 

 with all the men," which is certainly an erroneous 

 interpretation. I find no mention of calculi in 

 Pliny's text. F. Madden. 



Naval Action (Vol. xi., p. 266.). — I beg to refer 

 C. M. to Capt. Jones's letter to the editor of the 

 No. 322.] 



United Sei-vice Journal for 1832 (vol. iii. p. 162,), 

 in vindication of his late commanding officer, 

 Capt. Robert Corbett of the " Africaine," in which 

 he has, at full length, refuted the calumnies cur- 

 rent about that gallant officer ; of whose frigate 

 he was master's mate, in her action with the 

 "Iphigenie" and "Astrce." This letter, with 

 Capt. Hall's candid apology at p. 398. of the same 

 volume, ought to have put the question at rest for 

 ever ; but such is the vitality of calumny, that it 

 is ever and anon revived as fresh as at first, and 

 not the less so from having the sanction of such a 

 name as Dr. Arnold's given to it. 



I do not know why C. M. should find so much 

 mystery and difficulty in discovering the name of 

 the vessel, captain, &c., in a case which has been 

 so long before the public as this. Part of these 

 particulars are given above ; and, for the rest, the 

 action took place off the Island of Bourbon, in 

 the Indian Ocean, September 13, 1810. Xiv. 



The Rose of Sharon (Vol. x., p. 508.). — The 

 flower inquired after by Mr. Middleton is pro- 

 bably the rose of Jericho, the flower of immortality, 

 the Anastatica hierochuntica, of Linne, of which 

 Jesus Sirach (xxiv. 14.) spoke. A full and very 

 pleasing description of it, under the name of Rose 

 of Jericho, will be found in an excellent work re- 

 cently published, Reise in het geloofde land (Jour- 

 ney in the Promised Land), by E. W. Schiilz, in 

 1851. Let the querist read pp. 228—230., and 

 we doubt not he will be gratified, and perhaps in- 

 duced to read the whole of this delightful work. 

 Van Senden also, in his Het Heilige land (The 

 Holy Land), vol. ii. p. 8., speaking of the beauti- 

 ful land of Sefala, says at the close : " The most 

 remarkable flower of this district is the Anemone, 

 celebrated as the Rose of Sharon, by Israel's royal 

 poet" (Song of Songs, ii. 1.). The Rose of Sharon, 

 and the Rose of Jericho, a species of thlaspus, are 

 thus different flowers. To the latter alone belong 

 the qualities mentioned by the querist. — From 

 the Navorscher. J- S. 



Norwich. 



Ghost of Julius Cmsar (Vol. x., p. 508.). — I 

 fear that Uneda's instance in proof of ghosts, 

 such as the moderns understand by the term, being 

 known to, or imagined by the ancients, is an un- 

 lucky one, for I have met with no ancient historian 

 that regards the phantom that appeared to Brutus 

 as the ghost of Csesar, and suspect that Shakspeare 

 is the chief or only authority for making it to have 

 been so. Mr. De Quincey's assertion, however, 

 is much too sweeping ; most of the ghost stories 

 among the ancients are clearly mere dreams, but 

 instances may be found, in which the apparition 

 is disposed to display itself to the waking senses, 

 and consequently must rank as a genuine ghost — 

 the spectre of Darius in the Persae of ^schylus, and 



