416 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 236. 



rated zinc or wire-gauze, with a device which 

 would serve to adjust the quantum of air ac- 

 cording to circumstances, and to exclude it at 

 night. By such contrivances, while the offensive 

 and noxious currents which proceed from wide 

 openings would be obviated, the supplies of fresh 

 air would always be equal to the demand. The 

 purest air may not be accessible — but, as Frank- 

 lin says, " no common air from without is so un- 

 wholesome as the air within a close room." 



The escape of the vitiated air requires less con- 

 sideration. If the ceiling of the room be flat, 

 with another room above it, the upper part of 

 each window, in the shape of a narrow slip, might 

 be made to act as a sort of safety-valve ; but if 

 the windows are on one side only, corresponding 

 openings should be made on the opposite side, so 

 that there would almost always be, more or less, a 

 leeward opening. A vaulted ceiling, without any 

 other room over it, seems to be the most desirable 

 form, as the vitiated air would rise and collect to- 

 wards its centre, where there could be no counter- 

 current to impede its egress. 



It is the union of those two objects, the admission 

 of fresh air and the riddance of the vitiated air, 

 skilfully and economically effected, which forms 

 the circle of the science of ventilation. 



I have restricted myself to the means of ven- 

 tilation, which is requisite at all seasons of the 

 year, but am quite aware that warmth, or a tem- 

 perature above that of the external air, is some- 

 times indispensable to health and comfort, and 

 therefore to the free exercise of the faculties. I 

 believe, however, that the means proposed for the 

 admission of fresh air might also be made avail- 

 able for the admission of heated air, and that 

 either description of air might be admitted inde- 

 pendently of the other, or both descriptions simul- 

 taneously. 



A vast increase of reading-rooms, lecture-rooms, 

 and school-rooms, may be safely predicted, and 

 as the due ventilation of such rooms is a project 

 of undeniable importance, I hope this note, eccen- 

 tric in form, but earnest as to its purpose, may 

 invite the remarks of others more conversant with 

 architecture and physics — either in correction, or 

 confirmation, or extension, of its general prin- 

 ciples and details. Bolton Cornet. 



The Terrace, Barnes, 

 28th April, 1854. 



THE HOUSE OF RUSSELL, OR DU ROZEL. 



At a time when the readers of " N. & Q.," and 

 the world at large, have been hearing of the gift 

 of a bell to a village church in Normandy, so 

 pleasantly and readily made by the princely house 

 of Russell, far exceeding the modest solicitation 

 of the cure for assistance by way of a subscription, 



in remembrance of the Du Rozels having left 

 their native patrimony in France to share the 

 fortunes of the Conqueror in Old England, the 

 following particulars may not be uninteresting. 



Mr. Wiffen, when compiling his elaborate His- 

 torical Memoirs of the House of Russell, from the 

 Time of the Noi-man Conquest, had occasion to 

 make some inquiries respecting a statement put 

 forth by a M. Richard Seguin, a rich dealer in 

 merceries and wooden shoes at Vire, in the de- 

 partment of Calvados ; who, it appears, had a 

 mania for appropriating the literary labours of 

 others as his own, and, in fact, is stigmatised as 

 a voleur litteraire by M. Querard, in his curious 

 work entitled Les Supercheries Litteraires De- 

 voilees. Mr. Wiffen wished to ascertain M. Se- 

 guin's authority for affirming in some work, the 

 name of which is not given by M. Querard, but 

 which is probably the Histoire du Pays d'Auge et 

 des Eveques Comtes de Lisieux, Vire, 1832, that 

 the Du Rozels were descended from Bertrand de 

 Briquebec. M. Seguin's reply is contained in the 

 following letter from M. Le Normand of Vire, to 

 whom Mr. Wiffen had written, requesting him to 

 obtain M. Seguin's authority for his statement : 



" J'ai vu M. Seguin, et je lui ai demands d'ou pro- 

 venaient les renseignements dont il s'etait servi pour 

 dire dans son ouvrage que les Du Rozel descendaient 

 des Bertrand de Bricquebec. II ma repondu qu'il 

 Vignorait ; qu'il avait eu en sa possession une grande 

 quantite de Copies de Chartres et d'anciens titres qui 

 lui avaient fourni les materiaux de son histoire, mais 

 qu'il ne savait nullement (Toil elles provenaient." — His- 

 torical Memoirs, fyc, vol. i. p. 5. n. 1. 



The fact appears to be, that M. Seguin had ob- 

 tained possession, through marriage, of a quantity 

 of MSS., and was in the habit of printing them as 

 his own works. Some of them had belonged to 

 an Abbe Lefranc, one of the priests who were 

 murdered in the diabolical massacre of the clergy 

 in the prisons of Paris in September, 1792 ; and 

 others of the MSS. had been the property of a 

 M. Noel Deshayes, Cure de Compigni,^ whose 

 Memoires pour servir a V Histoire des Eveques de 

 Lisieux, were published by Seguin as his own, 

 but altered and disfigured under the title of — 



" Histoire du Pays d'Auge et des Eveques Comtes 

 de Lisieux, contenant des Notions sur l'Archeologie, 

 les Droits, Coutumes, Franchises et Libertes du Bocage 

 et de la Normandie ; Vire, Adam, 1832." 



The MS., however, from which Seguin printed 

 his forgery, turns out to have been but a copy ; 

 the original having since been discovered by M. 

 Formeville in the library of the Seminaire of 

 Evreux, and is now about to be published by that 

 gentleman (see Supercheries, torn, iv., Paris, 1852). 

 By a just retribution, M. Formeville is oneof the 

 literary men to whom Seguin refused to point out 

 his original authorities. M. Querard quotes some 



