114 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 94. 



In 1790 1 recollect an old man of a hundred and 

 twenty, who appeared before the French National 

 Assembly, and gave clear answers to questions on 

 events which he had witnessed one hundred and 

 ten years before. 



Similar lengths of personal remembrance are 

 related of old Parr, Lady Desmond, and others, 

 whose ages exceeded one hundred and forty 

 years. The daughter-in-law of the French king, 

 Charles IX. (widow of his natural son, the Duke 

 of Angouleme), survived that monarch by a 

 hundred and thirty-nine years (1574 — 1713), — a 

 rare, if not an unexampled fact. The famous 

 Cardan, in his singular work, Ve Vita Propria, 

 states that his grandfather's birth anteceded his 

 own by a hundred and fifty years (1351 — 1501). 

 Franklin relates that his grandfather was born in 

 the sixteenth century, and reign of Elizabeth, as 

 Sir Stephen Fox, the grandfather of our contem- 

 porary statesman, Charles, was born shortly after 

 the death of James I., in 1627. A very near 

 connexion of my own, though much younger, is 

 the grandson of a gentleman whose birth retro- 

 cedes to Charles II., in 1672. Niebulir grounds 

 one of his objections to the truth of tlie early 

 Koman history on the ver^' great improbability of 

 the long period of two hundred and forty-five 

 years assigned to the collective reigns of the seven 

 kings. It does, indeed, exceed the average of 

 enthroned life; but the seven monarchs of Spain, 

 from Ferdinand (the Catholic) to the French 

 Bourbon, Philip V., inclusively, embraced a pe- 

 riod of two hundred and sixty-seven years in their 

 successive rule (1469, when Ferdinand obtained 

 the crown of Arragon, and 1746, the date of 

 Philip's death). The eminent German historian 

 otters, however, much stronger arguments in dis- 

 belief of the Roman annals ; but he had many 

 predecessors in his views, though himself, unques- 

 tionably, the most powerful writer on the subject. 

 J. R. (An Octogenarian.) 



P. S. — In Vol. iv., p. 73., Madame du Chatelet's 

 epitaph on Voltaire contains an error, where canis 

 twice appears, but should be cams. The lady's 

 object was certainly complimentary, not sarcastic. 

 ]\ly cramjit writing was of course the cause of the 

 mistake, though, in the opinion of many, the sub- 

 stituted word would not appear inapplicable to 

 Voltaire. A subjoined article of the same page, 

 " Children at a Birth," reminds me of something 

 analogous in Mercier's Tableau de Paris, where 

 reference is made to the 3Iemoires de V Academic 

 des Sciences for the fact. The wife of a baker, it 

 is there stated, in the short space of seven years, 

 produced one-and-twenty children, or three at 

 each annual birth ; and, to prove that the prolific 

 faculty was exclusively his, he made a maid ser- 

 vant similarly the mother of three children at a 

 birth. The major portion, it appears, of this 



numerous progeny long survived. Bayle, in his 

 article of Tiraqueau, a French advocate of the 

 sixteenth centur}^, quotes an epigram, which would 

 make him the father of forty-five children, and, it 

 is added, by one wife. If so, several must at least 

 have been twins : 



" Fa!cundus facnndus aqiis Tiraquelkis amator. 

 Terquindecim librorum et liberum parens; 

 Qui nisi restiiixisset aquis alisteniius ij;nes, 

 Implesset orbem prole animi atque corporis." 



The accomplished authoress of A Residence on 

 the Shores of the Baltic (1841, 2 volumes) was, 

 it is well known, one o{ fotir congenital children 

 in Norwich, where her lather was an eminent 

 physician. J- R- 



Cork, August, 1851. 



Nelsons Coat (Voh iii., p. 517.). — The recog- 

 nition of the coat Nelson wore at Trafalgar depends 

 on its fulfilling a detail in the following fixct. The 

 present Captain Sir George "Westphal was a mid- 

 shipman on board the Victory, and was wounded 

 on the back of the head : he was taken into the 

 cockpit, and placed by the side of Nelson. When 

 Westphal's wound was dressed, nothing else being 

 immediately available. Nelson's coat was rolled up 

 and used as a support to Westphal's head. Blood 

 flowed from the wounJ, and, coagulating, stuck 

 the bullion of one of the epaulettes to the bandage ; 

 it was deemed better to cut off some of the bullion 

 curls to liberate the coat : so that the coat Nelson 

 wore on that day will be found minus of bullion in 

 one of the epaulettes. JEgrotus. 



St}-ange Reason for Iteepivg a Public -house. — 

 A clergyman in the south-west of England, calling 

 lately on one of his parishioners, who kept a public- 

 house, remarked to her how sorry he was, when 

 passing along the road, to hear such noises pro- 

 ceeding from her house. " I wonder," said he, 

 " that any woman can keep a public-house, espe- 

 cially one where there is so much drunkenness 

 and depravity as in yours." "Oh, Sir," she re- 

 plied, '• that is the very reason why I like to keep 

 such a house, because I see every day so much of 

 the worst part of human nature." T. W. 



Superstitions with regard to Glastonbury Thorn. 

 — It is handed down, that when Joseph of Ari- 

 mathea, during his mis.^ion to England, arrived at 

 Weary-all-hill, near Glastonbury, he struck his 

 travelling staff into the earth, wdiich immediately 

 took root, and ever after put forth its leaves and 

 blossoms on Christmas Day, being converted into 

 a miraculous thorn. 



This tree, wdiich had two trunks, was preserved 

 until the time of Queen Elizabeth ; when one of 

 the trunks was destroyed by a Puritan, and the 



