Nov. 18. 1854.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



403 



Throughout the memoir Mr. D' Alton seems to 

 have been influenced by no feelings of partiality ; 

 inasmuch as the prelate, whose advancement to 

 almost the highest ecclesiastical dignity in Ireland 

 was justified in the general opinion by the eminent 

 service which he had performed in vindicating the 

 doctrines of his Church, has been here held up to 

 public view as a flagrant instancBjOf "arrogant 

 and uncharitable bigotry." Abhba. 



" Charity begins at homey — This appears to 

 have been derived from 1 Tim. v. 4. : " Let them 

 learn first to show piety at home, and to requite 

 their parents." Probably the present rather 

 selfish sense of the saying arose from perversion of 

 this original sense. J. P. 



Birmingliam. 



Voltaire. — Extract from the MS. journal of the 

 late Major "W. Broome, 5th Royal Irish Dragoons, 

 for upwards of fifty years the most intimate friend 

 of Sir Henry Grattan, Speaker of the House of 

 Commons. He died in 1826, aged eighty-nine 

 years : 



« March l&h, 1765 (Geneva). — Dined with Mons. 

 Voltaire, who beliaved very politely. He is very old, was 

 dressed in arobe-de-chambreof blue sattanand gold spots 

 in it, Avitli a sort of sattan cap and blue tussle of gold. 

 He spoke all the time English. . . . His house is not 

 very fine, but genteel, and stands upon a mount close to 

 the mountains. He is tall and very thin, has a very 

 piercing eye, and a look singularly vivacious. He told 

 me o( his acquaintance with Pope, Swift (with whom he 

 lived for three months at Lord Peterborough's), and Gay, 

 who first showed him the Beggars Oppora before it was 

 acted. He says he admires Swift, and loved Gay vastly. 

 He said that Swift had a great deal of the ' ridiculum 

 acre.' ... He told me of his being present at the 

 ceremony of Lord Kinsale's first wearing his hat before 

 the king. ... At the house of Mons. Voltaire there 

 is a handsome new church, with this inscription on the 

 tipper part of the front to the west : 



* DEO 

 EREXIT 

 VOLTAIRE, 

 MDCCLXI.' " 



T. W.D. Brooks, M. A. 



The Russian Language at Oxford. — I cannot 

 now refer to the volume and page in " N". & Q." 

 "where it was stated that the first grammar of the 

 Kussian language was printed at the press of the 

 University of Oxford. The fact, however remark- 

 able, is, I believe, undoubted, for I find it so 

 stated in Professor Vater's Litteratur der Gram- 

 matiken, Lexika, ^-c, 2nd edit. 8vo., Berlin, 1847 ; 

 a work which is the chief authority on the subjects 

 ■of which it treats. It Is not, perhaps, generally 

 known that when the world was told, some twenty 

 years since, that an institution for the teaching 

 and study of the European languages was about to 

 be established at Oxford, the Emperor of Russia, 

 with all the astuteness of his race, offered to endow 

 a professorship of the Russian language at the 



university ; a proposal fair enough, abstractedly 

 considered, with reference to teaching the lan- 

 guage of a great and powerful state, but deemed' 

 quite unfit to be accepted at the hands of the Czar 

 of Russia. The far-seeing Dons of Oxford had 

 the presentiment, it Is said, that the professor, if a 

 native of Russia, might very possibly become a 

 tool and spy in subserviency to the potentate that 

 endowed the chair, and therefore declined, " with 

 many thanks," to be led into the trap prepared 

 for them. 



From any unexceptionable quarter such a mu- 

 nificent boon would, no doubt, have been accepted 

 with gratitude, and the donor would have stood 

 enrolled, and been devoutly " commemorated," in 

 ail time coming, amongst the " founders and be- 

 nefactors " of Alma Mater. John Macrat. 



Oxford. 



" De bene esse." — This phrase Is often used. 

 What does It mean ? M. 



The African Elephant. — Has any attempt been 

 made in modern times to domesticate the elephant 

 of Africa, and to render him useful to man, as his 

 congener the elephant of the Asiatic continent is ? 

 On the Egyptian monuments elephants are among- 

 the animals brought as tribute by negro tribes, 

 and many of those exhibited In the amphitheatres 

 of Rome were, without doubt, brought from 

 Africa. The Carthaginians employed elephants 

 in their wars, and unless we suppose them to have, 

 drawn their supplies from India, which Is not very 

 probable, the inference is that, in those days, the 

 African elephant had been rendered subservient 

 to man. Surely an attempt to domesticate these 

 powerful animals would be a more praiseworthy 

 act than the wholesale butchery of them, of which 

 so graphic an account is given in certain publi- 

 cations. Edgar MacCulloch. 



Guernsey, 



Hindoo Folk Lore. — I have been told that the 

 poorer Hindoos have a belief that little children 

 are never exposed to danger from the bite of 

 venomous serpents, and that the reason they give 

 for this is, that the serpent is a very wise animal, 

 and knows that it ought not to injure little chil- 

 dren, because they are innocent of sin. Is the 

 fact, that children are seldom or never bitten by 

 serpents, borne out by the experience of your 

 Indian readers ? WxAI. Eraser, B.C.L. 



Faggot-vote. — Can you inform me of the 

 origin of the term used In this part of the country 

 to denote a spurious or fictitious vote, formed 

 usually by the nominal transfer of a suflicient 

 qualification to an otherwise unqualified man ; 



