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opinion may exist as to its literary merit, the tragedy won a triumph, both for author and manager. The house in the Fields was rescued from bankruptcy, and the poet, to whom Pope had paid £250 for translating four books of the "Odyssey" for him, netted four times that sum by this drama. Fenton was now famous and happy, too. Being content with this one great dramatic success, he lived calmly the brief seven years of life which followed. He died at Easthampstead, the guest of Sir William Trumbull. "He was never named but with praise and fondness, as a man in the highest degree excellent and amiable."

Pope paid a beautiful tribute to Fenton's character in his famous epitaph:

"This modest stone, what few vain marbles can More truly say, Here lies an honest man,'

A poet bless'd beyond the poet's fate,

Whom Heaven kept sacred from the proud and great. Foe to loud praise and friend to learned ease,

Content with science in the vale of peace,

Calmly he looked on either life, and here
Saw nothing to regret or there to fear;
From Nature's temperate feast rose satisfied,
Thanked Heaven that he had lived, and that he died."

HARTFORD, CONN.

F. T. C.

Stone Worn Away (Vol. ii, p. 191).—It is possible that the querist refers to the steps of a public building in Pompeii. These are described in a popular book, whose name I cannot now recall, as having been nearly worn in pieces by the feet, probably of children. At least three inches in depth have been worn from the steps in front of the Cathedral of St. Mark, in Venice, while the broad step in front of the Campanile has been equally worn. In the stone steps leading to the recently discovered crypt of Beauchamp Chapel, one of the upper stones has been worn quite in two. The foot of the bronze statue of St. Peter, in St. Peter's, at Rome, has been kissed by worshipping pilgrims until the semblance of the shape of a foot is almost lost.

PHILADELPHIA, PA.

J. W. REDWAY.

Qui Vive (Vol. v, p. 103).-Not a few so-called French idioms are found, on exa nination, to be Latin pure and simple, and

among them I look upon qui vive as a very plain example of conjunctious dubitativus.

In my mind, Qui vive? (who is there that may be alive?) is absolutely analogous to Ovid's Quid faciat? (what is there that he may do?), to Cicero's Quid agerem? Quid faceret aliud? etc., etc.

Instances of the Latin subjunctive in idiomatic French are too numerous to need being recorded here. Que je t'interpelle, moi! could not be turned into English, mood for mood; what is it but Cicero's Egone ut te interpellen! We translate que je sache by as far as I know; Cicero said, quod sciam. Sauve qui peut! Advienne que pourra! Vienne le jour où! etc., are all so many other cases in point.

What wonderful discoveries "good old etymologists" would have made, had they spent, in studying history, one-half the time they wasted in straining the powers of their ingenuity! A. ESTOCLET.

NEW YORK CITY.

Greek Cities (Vol. v, pp. 162, etc.).There are a number of cities in Spain accredited to the Greeks and Phoenicians as the founders. Much is, however, traditional. Pliny, in his "Natural History," under "Account of Countries," mentions quite a number. The most authenticated are the following:

Gades, now Cadiz, founded by Phoeni cians, about 1100 B. C.

Hispal, now Seville, founded by same, date unknown.

Malaca, now Malaga, founded by same, about 1100 B. C.

Abdera, now Adra, founded by Greeks, date unknown.

Saguntum, now Murviedro, founded by Greeks from Zacynthus, i. e., Zante, about 1384 B. C.

Emporia, now Castellon de Ampurias, founded by a Greek colony from Marseilles, about 550 B. C.

I have cited the above few, but a reference to Strabo and Pliny, with an ancient geography, will be interesting to O. A. B.

In France there were not so many cities founded by the Greeks. The principal are: Massalia, now Marseilles, founded by Phoenicians, about 600 B. C.

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GOMMUNICATIONS.

What Year is This?"A German professor says our calculation of the Christian era is erroneous.' I find the above item going the rounds, with an added line which meekly informs the reader that we are off four or five years in our mode of reckoning time. For centuries there has been doubt as to the correctness of the accepted calculation of the Christian era. Learned historians cannot agree whether Christ was born in the year 747, 749, or 754, counting from the foundation of Rome.

"Prof. Sattler, of Munich, has published an essay in which he tried to reconcile the testimony of the evangelists with other historical data on this point. He has ex-, amined four copper coins which were struck in the reign of Herod Antipas, one of the sons of Herod the Great, from which he deduces the conclusion that Christ was not born in 754, but in 749, after the foundation of Rome, and therefore that 1890 is 1895. This opinion the professor substantiates by what he takes to be corroborative testimony of the evangelists.

"According to Matthew, Jesus was born. towards the end of the reign of Herod the Great, and that when Herod died Jesus was yet a little child. Luke says that James was born in the year in which the Governor of Syria made the first census in Judea. In another place he says that John began to baptize in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, and in that year baptized Jesus, who was then thirty years of age. St. Luke says that in Judea the first census was made during the reign of Herod; this census must have been ordered in the year 746 of Rome.

"Probably it was begun in Judea in 747Prof. Sattler thinks it was not made in Jerusalem earlier than 749. He finds that the four coins enabled him to make clear the

Authorship Wanted. I remember testimony of the evangelist as to the fifteenth these lines:

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year of the Emperor Tiberius. Though Augustus died August 19, 767, the reign of Tiberius must be counted from a year and a half earlier, from February, 766, when he was appointed coregent; therefore the fif teenth year of Tiberius falls in 780, when

John baptized Jesus, who was then about thirty years of age.

"One of the evangelists says that Jesus began to preach forty-six years after the building of the Temple by Herod at Jerusalem. Now it is known that the Temple was begun eighteen years after Herod was appointed regent by the Roman senate, or in the year 734 from the foundation of Rome. Adding forty-six to that year it gives 780 as the year in which Christ began to preach. If all these calculations of Prof. Sattler are correct, then the Christian era began five years earlier than is usually sup posed" (St. Louis Republic).

Sunken Cities-City of Is, etc. (Vol. i, pp. 124, etc.; iii, 107, etc.; iv, 154, etc.; V, 131, etc.).—In Macmillan's Magazine, for January, 1890, is an article by C. H. Herford on "The Father of Low German Poetry," Klaus Groth, b. 1819, in Western Holstein. Many of the poems in the volume entitled "Quickborn" (or "Running Spring") are founded on legends of the North Sea, its marshes, swift tides, and shallow sands. One of them on the buried city of Büsum is translated from the PlattDeutsch by Mr. Herford, as follows:

"Old Büsum lies below the wave,

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The waters came and scooped its grave.

'They scooped and scoured, they crawled and crept,

The island to the deep they swept.

'Never a stick nor straw was found; All buried in the gulf profound. "Nor any kine, nor dog, nor sheep; All swallowed in the deepest deep. "Whatever lived and loved the light, The sea locks in eternal night. "Sometimes at lowest ebb you see The tops of houses in the sea. "Then peers the steeple from the sand Like to the finger of a hand.

"Then are the bells heard softly ringing, And the choristers softly singing;

"And it is whispered o'er the deep, Suffer the buried dead to sleep!

LOUISA TRUMBULL COGSWELL.

Palæologus (Vol. v, p. 165).—In the parish church of Landulph, in the eastern

extremity of Cornwall, is a small brass tablet fixed against the wall, with the following inscription:

"Here lyeth the body of Theodore Paleologus, of Pesaro, in Italye, descended from the Imperial lyne of the last Christian Emperors of Greece, being the sonne of Camilio, the sonne of Prosper, the sonne of Theodore, the sonne of John, the sonne of Thomas, second brother of Constantine Paleologus, the 8th of the name, and last of that lyne that rayned in Constantinople, until subdued by the Turks; who married with Mary, the daughter of William Balls, of Hadlye, in Suffolke, gent., and had issue 5 children, Theodore, John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy; and departed this life at Clyfton, the 21st of Jan., 1636."

Above the inscription are the imperial arms: an eagle displayed with two heads, the two legs resting upon two gates; the imperial crown over the whole, and between the gates a crescent for difference as second Clyfton was an ancient mansion of the Arundel family in the parish of Landulph. H. R.

son.

SCHENECTADY, N. Y.

Popocatepetl (Vol. v. pp. 53, etc.).— In the New York Daily Herald of April 21, 1890, p. 7, it is stated that the expedition of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences has succeeded in exploding some very erroneous ideas in regard to the height of Mexican volcanoes. Profs. Anjelo Heilprin and Frank C. Baker, of the expedition, have just returned from an ascent of Popocatepetl, which they found to be nearly three thousand feet lower than the measurements of Humboldt.

The total height of the mountain, making allowance for minor barometrical corrections, is 14,700 feet above the sea level. J. W. MERRIAM.

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Thackeray's Nose Conflicting Statements (Vol. iv, pp. 179, etc.). A third claimant to the honor of breaking Thackeray's nose is mentioned in an article ("Some Few Thackerayana," by D. D.) in the National Review, August, 1889, viz. : "Apropos of school fights, Thackeray received his mark there, if he made it in caricatures. He met some 'Grey Friars' cronies one day and the needle of reminiscence pointed to a well-known frère, Venables, then talked of as a writer in the Saturday Review. He did this,' said Thackeray, laying an emphatic finger on his own nose, the bridge of which had suffered some disfigurement from a school encounter with that worthy in those early days. One cannot but smile at the omen conveyed in the future critic thus putting out of joint the schoolboy nose of the future author."

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The writer adds in a note: "Possibly an allusion to this occurs in the 'Letters,' p. 170, where, referring apparently to some adverse critique in that periodical (the Saturday Review), Mr. Thackeray says: 'I never for one minute should think that my brave old Venables would hit me, or, if he did, that he hadn't good cause for it.' See, also, p. 731: Venables was there, very shy and grand-looking; how kind that man has always been to me.

I copy, also, a "personal" from Harper's personal" from Harper's Weekly, July 5, 1890:

"Thackeray had a broken nose, the result, as has generally been supposed, of a school-boy fight with the late G. S. Vena. bles, Q.C. This fact has recently been established in a letter from a brother of the nose-breaker, who also says that Thackeray adopted the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh' because the great artist's face had been disfigured in the same way."

LOUISA TRUMBULL COGSWELL.

Spaniards from Santa Fé (by the Kansas Indians), who had attempted a settlement in some portion of what is now the State of Missouri, near the mouth of the Osage, probably. Of the three hundred that left Santa Fé with hopeful hearts, not one was left to tell the story of the massacre.

"The territory now called Kansas, or at least that portion of it that borders on Kaw, was occupied by the Kauzas Indians, and 'Kansas' is a corruption of that primitive name; happily, too, for the original is harsh and lacks the euphony of the modern form. It is alleged that the name was diverted from the original through the mistake of a proof-reader, who, revising the very early work of some missionary, mistook the 'u' for an inverted 'n' and so corrected it, and to that blunder we are indebted for the name of Kansas. The Kansas Indians are called the Kaws, a diminutive of Kausas or Kauzas. I have seen the word spelled in old books Kauza and Kausa, but the z is probably the correct letter."

Leper Kings (Vol. v, p. 161).-Sir Walter Scott is authority for the following statement: "Filth, poorness of living, and the want of linen, made this horrible disease (leprosy) formerly very common in Scotland. Robert Bruce died of the leprosy; and through all Scotland there were hospi tals erected for the reception of lepers, to prevent their mingling with the rest of the community" (see "Sir Hugh Le Blond," "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," Vol. iii, p. 61, note). H. R.

SCHENECTADY, N. Y.

Red Sea (Vol. v, p. 123, ).-Red Sea is not a correct translation of the Hebrew name for this gulf, but should be Reed Sea. Yam Suph (or Sooph in pronunciation) means Sea of a peculiar marine vegetation. ANCHOR. TIVOLI, N. Y.

Cool as a Cucumber (Vol. i, p. 272).

Kansas." In 1722-23," says the Kansas City Star, "the commander of the territory, in which was included what is now Kansas, claimed by France, erected a fort near the mouth of the Osage, in the hope-Drayton, in the "Polyolbion," Song 20, of preventing any further incursions by the Spaniards into the region beyond the Missouri. It was called Fort Orleans, and was built after the annihilation of a colony of

speaks of "the radish, somewhat hot *** the cucumber as cold, the heating artichoke." QUI TAM.

GERMANTOWN, PA.

Wise Men of Gotham (Vol. iv, p. 109). -The origin of the expression, "They They don't know enough to go in when it rains,' was explained by William Cranston Lawton in a lecture on "The Excavation of Delphi," given at Harvard College, October 22, 1889. Apropos of the stoa, or public portico, of Delphi, he told the following story:

"In old Greek times, Abdera was a city which was somewhat behindhand in its ways, and so was the butt of the wags of the day. Abdera got into financial difficulties and the stoa was sold to a wealthy citizen who closed it up. Greeks never go to their houses for other purposes than to eat or sleep except when it rains, and in old times the stoa was largely resorted to for the latter purpose. When the rain came the heart of the rich Abderan smote him because the people had no place to go, so he sent out the town heralds to invite them to their old resort, and the wags of Greece said that the inhabitants were so thick headed that they did not know enough to go in when it rained, and had to be told to do so by heralds" (from a report in Boston Traveler, October 23, 1889).

LOUISA TRUMBULL COGSWell.

Parallel Passages (Vol. v, p. 106).
"Aery tongues that syllable men's names

On sands, and shores, and desart wildernesses."
(Milton's "Comus," 208, 209.)

"In the deserts of Lop, in Asia, *** if one lose his company by chance, these devils will call him by his name, and counterfeit voices of his companions to seduce him" (Burton, "The Anatomy of Melancholy,' p. 1, Sec. 2, Mem. 1, Subs. 2).

SANDUSKY, O.

G. C. PARKE.

The Colors of Lakes and Rivers.— "What is the color of pure water? Almost any person who has no special knowledge of the subject will reply at once: It has no color.' Yet everybody knows, either through hearsay, or by the evidence of his own eyes, that the ocean is blue. Why the ocean looks blue is a question that few who have crossed it have ever sought to solve; and there are probably many travelers who, though they have seen most of the famous

rivers and lakes in the world, have failed to notice the remarkable differences in color which their waters present. Even the ocean is not uniform in color; in some places its waters are green or even yellowish. Some lakes are distinctly blue; others present various shades of green, so that in some cases they are hardly distinguishable from their level, grass-covered banks; a few are almost black. The Lake of Geneva is azure-hued; the Lake of Constance and the Lake of Lucerne are green; the color of the Mediterranean has been called indigo. The Lake of Brienz is greenish yellow and its neighbor, Lake Thun, is blue. New York has both green and blue lakes. The colors of rivers differ yet more widely. The Rhone is blue, and so is the Danube, while the Rhine is green. The St. Lawrence is blue. These various hues are not caused by mud or any opaque sediment such as that which makes the Mississippi coffee-colored, but belong to the waters, like the golden color of tea, without greatly impairing their transparency. The cause of the difference in the color of lakes and rivers has engaged the attention of many celebrated investigators of nature, such as Tyndall, Bunsen, Arago, SainteClaire, Deville, and others. Recently, Prof. Spring, of the University of Liege, has carefully investigated the question of the color of water, and has reached some interesting conclusions. According to him, absolutely pure water, when seen in masses of sufficient thickness, is blue, and all the varieties of color exhibited in lakes and streams arise from the presence in the water of mineral salts of different degrees of solubility and in varying quantities. Water containing carbonate of lime in a state of almost complete solution remains blue, but if the solution is less complete the water will have a tinge of green, which will grow stronger as the point of precipitation is approached. Prof. Spring concludes that, if lime is added to blue water in which so much carbonate of lime is already dissolved that the point of saturation is approached, the water will become green. In proof of this he cites the fact that the water near the shores of lakes and seas, where it comes in contact with limestone, is generally of a greener hue than elsewhere" (London Nature).

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