Aug. 16. 1851.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



121 



and therefore it may be supposed that "Petty 

 Cury" means ^'- parva curia," from some court-leet 

 or court-baron formerly held there ; the town-hall 

 is at the end of it to this day. The only objection 

 to the above is, that in the Cains map of Cam- 

 bridge, A. D. 1574, now in the British Museum, 

 Petty Curie is a large street even then, whilst 

 neither town-hall nor senate-house exist. 



J. Eastwood^. 



Surely there can be little doubt that the name 

 of this street at Cambridge is a corruption from 

 the French " petite ecurie." We knew little 

 enough about such matters when I was an under- 

 graduate tliere ; but still, I think, we could have 

 solved this mystery. Might I be permitted to 

 suggest that as the court stables at Versailles were 

 called "les petites ecuries," to distinguish them 

 from the king's, whi(;h were styled " les grandes 

 ecui-ies," although they exactly resembled them, 

 and contained accommodation for five hundred 

 horses ; so the street in question may have con- 

 tained some of the fellows' stables, which were 

 called "les petites ecuries," to distinguish them 

 from the masters'. Should this supposition be 

 correct, it would seem to imply that at one time 

 the French language was not altogether ignoi-ed 

 at Cambridge. H. C. 



Workington. 



THE WOED 



RACK IN THE "• TEMPEST. THE 



NEBULAR THEORY. 



(Vol. iii., p. 218. ; Vol. iv., p. 37.) 



Mr. Hickson seems to court opinion as to the 

 justness of his interpretation of i-ack. I tliere- 

 fore express my total and almost indignant dissent 

 from it. 



Luckily, neither in the proposition itself, nor in 

 the manner in which it is advocated, is there any- 

 thing to disturb my previous conviction as to the 

 true meaning of this word (which, in the well- 

 known passage in the Tempest, is, beyond all 

 doubt, " haze " or " vapour "), since few things 

 would be more distasteful to me than to encounter 

 any argument really capable of throwing doubt 

 upon the reading of a passage I have long looked 

 upon as one of the most marvellous instances of 

 philosophical depth of thought to be met with, 

 even in Shakspeare, — one of those astonishing 

 sneculations, in advance of his age, that now and 

 then drop from him as from the lips of a child 

 inspired, — wherein the grandeur of tlie sentiment 

 is so out of all proportion to (he simplicity and 

 absence of pretension with which it is introduced, 

 that the reader, not less surprised than delighted, 

 is scarcely able to ajjpreciatc the full meaning until 

 after long anil careful consideration. 



It is only lately that the nebular theory of con- 

 densation lias been advanced, for the purpose of 



speculating upon the probable formation of pla- 

 netary bodies. Yet it is a subject that possesses 

 a strange coincidence with this passage of Shak- 

 sj^eare's Tempest. 



Perhaps the best elucidation I can give of it will 

 be to cite a certain passage in Dr. Nichols' Archi- 

 tecture of the Heavens, which happens to bear a 

 rather remarkable, although I believe an acciden- 

 tal, resemblance to Shakspeare's words : accidental, 

 because if Dr. Nichols had this passage of the 

 Tempest present to his mind, when writing in a 

 professedly pojiular and familiar style, he would 

 scarcely have omitted allusion to it, especially as 

 it would have afforded a peculiarly happy illustra- 

 tion of his subject. 



I shall now quote both passages, in order that 

 they may be conveniently compared : 



" Our revels now are ended — these our actors 

 As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 

 Are melted into ah' — into thin air: 

 And, like tlie baseless fabric of this vision, 

 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

 The solemn temples, the great globe itself. 

 Yea, all that it inherit — shall dissolve — 

 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 

 Leave not a rack behind." 



in the laboratory of the chemist matter easily 



passes through all conditions, the solid, liquid, and 

 gaseous, as if in a sort of phantasviagoria ; and his 

 highest discoveries even now are pointing to the con- 

 clusion, that the bodies which make up the solid por- 

 tion of onr earth may, simply by the dissolution of 

 existing combinations, he tdtimately resolved into a per- 

 manently gaseous form." — Nichols' Architecture of the 

 Heavens, p. 147. 



Had we no other presumption to lead us to 

 Shakspeare's true meaning but what is afforded by 

 the expression, "into air — thin air," it ought, in 

 my opinion, to be amply sufficient ; for no rational 

 person can entertain a doubt that Shakspeare in- 

 tended the repetition, " thin air," to have reference 

 to the simile that was to follow. The globe itself 

 shall dissolve, and, like this vision, leave not a 

 7xick behind ! In what was the resemblance to the 

 vision to consist, if not in melting, like it, into thin 

 air ? into air unobscured by vapour, rarified from 

 the slightest admixture of rack or cloud. 



Shakspeare knew that atmospheric rack is not 

 insubstantial; that it is corporeal like the globe 

 itself, of which it is a part ; and that, so long as a 

 particle of it remained, dissolution could not be 

 complete. 



And shall we reject this exquisite philosophy — 

 this profundity of thought — to substitute our 

 own mean and common -place ideas ? A. E. B. 



Leeds, July 22. 



P. S. — Apart from the philosophical beauty of 

 this wonderful passage, there are other aspects in 

 which it may be studied with not less interest. 



How true is the poetical image of the rack as 



