W. B. observes, "the account given in p. 62, of the discovery of See-quah-yah, the Cherokee Indian, respecting the reducing his native verbal language into writing, by an alphabet of his own invention, especially when carried on to numerals, is very curious. It reminds me of a little I contributed to the Archæologia, on essay the India method of Picture-writing, nearly fifty years ago, in consequence of a memoir on the subject then lately communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by the late Governor Pownall."

ARBITRATOR remarks, "I am at present engaged in a reference, and the merits of the case entirely depend upon the construction to be put upon an abbreviated' wt' written at the end of a line, in an instru-ment 300 years old, whether it is to be construed with or without. The usage is in favour of the latter construction, and I shall feel obliged to any of your readers who can inform me whether wt' is an abbreviation ever used for without, in old documents, especially in the 16th century."

AN OLD SUBSCRIBER remarks, "the claim of the late amiable Mr. FitzGerald (see p. 421) to be representative' of the Desmond family, would not, I apprehend, be acquiesced in by the Irish Heralds; but, even if that claim could have been substantiated, his boast of the Duke of Leinster's being of his family would be yet unfounded. Your readers will see in Sir William Betham's Antiquarian Researches,' that the Earls of Desmond were of a junior branch of the Earls of Kildare, progenitors of the Ducal house of Leinster."

S. R. inquires, "What was the practical result of Sir Samuel Garth's successful satirical poem, entitled, The Dispensary?' Was a Dispensary founded, as proposed by the College of Physicians? or any other arrangement made, productive of public be nefit?"

G. S. has been misled by a statement in Debrett's Peerage, which states Louisa, daughter of Augustus 4th Earl of Berkeley, to have been the wife of the late Sir Eliab Harvey. He will find, on further inquiry, that the Earl's three daughters, "Ladies Louisa, Elizabeth, and Frances, were all three born on the same day, July 28th, 1749, and lived to be christened, but died soon after" (Collins's Peerage, by Brydges, vol. iii. p. 625). Lady Louisa Harvey was, however, a half-sister of the infant with whom she has been confounded, being a daughter of the same mother (Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Drax, esq.) who, after the Earl of Berkeley's death, became the third wife of Robert Earl Nugent, and by him mother of the late Marchioness of Buckingham (and Baroness, Nugent), and of Lady Louisa Nugent, married (as we cor

rectly stated) to Sir Eliab Harvey, and still surviving.-Relative to another of the same Earl of Berkeley's daughters, the late Margravine of Anspach, Debrett has two incorrect dates. She was married to the Margrave, Oct. 30, not 18, 1791; and he died not Dec. 1805, but Jan. 5, 1806. Her Highness died Jan. 31, 1828. In the same page (and again in p. 872), we should for Charlborough read Charborough. Debrett's Peerage still requires a great deal of purging. The inquiry proposed by a CONSTANT READER relative to the family of Theodoro Paleologus, a descendant of the Christian Emperors of Greece, who, having married an Englishwoman, died in 1636, and was buried in the Church of Landulph in Cornwall, was made without receiving an answer in our volume LXIII. p. 719. His epitaph will be found there printed.

AN OCCASIONAL CORRESPONDENT remarke, "In my letter, p. 294, respecting the Tierney family, there is a small error: instead of Mr. Tierney generally resided,' it should have been Mrs. (viz. Thomas) Tierney, &c. And it might have been added, that their children were brought up and educated in England,' whence it may be inferred, that it was not convenient for the father to come to this country. Was Miss Tierney, who married the Rev. Stephen Weston (p. 370), a relation of the family above mentioned?"

Nicholas Stone, the very eminent Statuary, who lived in the reign of James the First, and executed many elegant monuments in different parts of this country, particularly one for the Bedford family, said to have had many particulars of his works, with the charges, inserted in a book formerly in possession of Vertue the engraver. Any information respecting this curious document, if extant, or which may lead to the discovery of its present possessor, or the repository in which it is preserved, will oblige Q.

Can any of our Correspondents, acquainted with the minute history of the Civil Wars of Charles the First, inform L. what were the circumstances alluded to in the Life of Sir John Denham the Poet, respecting which Dr. Johnson remarks, "that the knowledge of Cowley's hand" in a correspondence carried on between the King and his friends, having endangered his detection, he happily escaped? [See Johnson's Lives of Poets, vol. i. p. 105.]

Information is requested respecting Henry Stubbe, said to have been Incumbent of Spilsby in Lincolnshire, temp. Jac. I. his family and descendants.

The Letter of J. H. relative to the old Mansion at Stean, is referred to the Historian of Northamptonshire.

THE HE Bucolics of Virgil, while they realise the compliment of molle atque facetum bestowed on the delicate and elegant style of their composition, are yet not without some obscurities, which even to this day seem to have eluded all attempts at illustra tion. Let us take the first Bucolic, vv. 54-59, for one example of difficulty yet unsolved:

Hinc tibi, quæ semper vicino ab limite

sæpes

Hyblais apibus florem depasta salicti, Sæpe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro : Hinc altâ sub rupe, &c. &c.

Here Heynè begins with confessing that there is much embarassment in

:

these verses. Depasta for depasta est is awkward and then semper is strangely out of place. Would not quâ semper make the sentence more clear? Then too, one may fairly ask, can quæ apibus depasta est, stand for quam apes depascuntur, in respect of the tense?-a point of objection not impregnable perhaps, but quite enough, as far as that point is concerned, to make the whole passage, in its common interpretation, rather worse than better.

Suppose we were to try what a mere change in the punctuation might do, to set every thing right, and even with increased beauty, in three sweet verses hitherto generally ill understood.

The poet Shenstone, in his Posthumous Essays, somewhere has an observation, that of all phrases in the English language none comes to the ear with more touching effect, than the pathetic " no more." On the same ground, may we not say, that " more," and "as ever," are entitled to rank amongst the most pleasing of associated sounds?

once

Is there any thing then to hinder

The

quæ semper from carrying that delightful association along with it? murmuring of the bees on that willow hedge in its bloom, as it ever has done, (que semper, sc. suasit) will often again, as before, by its soft whispering charm you into the enjoyment of a slumber.

"Hinc tibi, quæ semper, vicino ab limite

sæpes

Hyblais apibus florem depasta salicti, Sæpe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro." Observe too, particularly, by way of contrast, the poor man Melibus (vv. 75-79.) has for himself a very different reflection, full of sorrow and sadnessa "no more," in truth, of the very bitterest nature.

"Ite meæ, felix quondam pecus, ite capellæ : Non ego vos posthac, viridi projectus in antro, Dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbo," &c.

Few Latin scholars, if any, in Great Britain, could have a better title to be consulted on a critical question of such a kind, than Professor Hunter of St. Andrew's. The venerable old man, then an octogenarian (in 1826), on his attention being called to the place, in this new mode of punctuating and explaining it, delivered his opinion with the utmost frankness of assent.

"I am delighted with your explanation of Hinc tibi, quæ semper,' &c. (Bucolic. i. 54.) It improves the syntax, restores the pathos, and gives elegance to a passage, on any other view far from elegant. Without it, the contrast is lost between the continued happy condition of the one shepherd, and the altered and forlorn situation of the other."

Let the next editor of Virgil therefore punctuate and explain accordingly.

4. For the Attic purity of the New Testament Greek, in respect either of