The Turkish Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq. Newly translated by Edward Seymour Forster. (Oxford, Clarendon Press. 7s. 6d. net).

THE

'Life and Letters of Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, by C. T. Forster and F. H. B. Daniell, was published in two volumes in 1881. This is a comprehensive, not a handy and homely work, and the present translator, by familiarity on his travels with a little Elzevir copy of the Turkish letters, had found that this part at least of de Busbecq's correspondence deserved better of posterity than merely the historian's attention-deserved, in fact, that highest honour of all, existence and use in a pocket edition. From this point of view more than ever will depend upon the translator, for no intrinsic merit in the substance

"

Mr.

will avail to give a clumsy translationance right to be promoted to the pocket. Forster's translation, however, stands all the required tests: it is fluent and readable; it conveys character; it neither blurs outlines nor irritates by obvious hesitations, and it suits itself to the date and milieu with which it is concerned. When he claims for the letters a place beside those of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, and beside Kinglake's Eothen, we feel he does so without needing to plead allowance from English readers for their being translations. On most other grounds Busbecq can claim superiority over Lady Mary and Kinglake. He was at Constantinople as imperial ambassador, and therefore in a position to see and describe a good deal that other foreigners must always miss; he saw Turkey at a moment of her history far more interesting than those at which they visited her; and it may also perhaps be fairly maintained that he excelled them both in breadth of knowledge, variety of interests and kindly humanity. As Mr. Forster puts it

He was the first European to penetrate into certain parts of Asia Minor since their occupation by the Turks; he was the first copyist of the most famous of all Latin historical inscriptions, the Monumentum Ancyranum; and he brought back to Vienna some 240 classical manuscripts he was the first to introduce the lilac and tulip into Western Europe, while his preservation of the CrimGothic vocabulary was a unique contribution to the history of language."

The Turkish letters are four in number, addressed to his friend Nicholas Michault. As imperial ambassador at Constantinople in the days of Soleiman's glory, his duty being to negotiate some form of peace, Busbecq contributes what is worth having to our knowledge of the complicated political and military situation; but the greater part of his letters is taken up with his observations of the country, sketches of character, anecdotes, notes of popular custom and folk-lore and descriptions of his immediate surroundings and daily life. For a considerable time he was lodged in a huge caravanserai, the court of which afforded him the only opportunity for out-ofdoor exercise. Here he kept a great collection

of animals and birds, and some of the most amusing of these pages are concerned with them. Two outstanding general features are the sympathetic but shrewdly discriminating knowledge of the Turks, pointed for his correspondent by detailed account of individuals, and greatly enhanced by humour, and then, pervading the whole, that tone and temper peculiar to the most highly cultivated minds of the sixteenth century, when great learning and a more or less academic outlook on life were more readily and closely associated with the practical business of administration and international politics than they have been since.

Essays on Old London. By Sydney Perks. (Cambridge University Press. 12s. 6d. net.).

وو

which have at different times been matter THESE essays number three, all on subjects of controversy. The first deals with the Guildhall, in particular with its restoration and with discoveries recently made there, under the direction of Mr. Perks, as City Surveyor to the Corporation of London. It is so closely packed with interesting information that, though not itself of very great length, it can hardly be dealt with in a brief review. The general result is much to increase respect for the Guildhall as a fine building, constructed originally all at one time and to one plan, to take the place of that "olde and lytell cottage which the City Fathers at the beginning of the fifteenth century found miserably inadequate to their needs. Its history is divided in two by the adventure of the Great Fire, in which, as readers of Mr. Bell's book know, one Thomas Vincent saw it stand, the whole body of it in view for several hours together, without flames he thought because the oak timbers were so solid-in a bright shining coat, as if it had been a palace of gold, or a great building of burnished brass." Since that day and the immediately subsequent repair and re-building, an extraordinary amount of piecemeal alteration has from time to time been carried out, old work being masked by new construction in many places, and in others disguised in plaster and paint, the latter with such thorough effect that Mr. Perks confesses he himself at one time did not consider the building genuine. He himself has brought out its genuineness beyond any doubt. The work in the crypt is, however, the best, and most interesting in its revelations, of what has been done here.

66

now

The next essay discusses the plans made for rebuilding London after the Great Fire. Wren's plan, on Gwynn's authority, has been represented as approv'd by the King and Parliament but unhappily defeated by faction." But, after careful search, Mr. Perks has found no record of any such approval, and, on the other hand, abundant evidence that it was summarily rejected, in the prompt and authorised start to reconstruct the City on the lines we know. Indeed, there is no difficulty in showing that Wren's grandiose scheme,

which would take years to carry out, and involve a difficult and expensive preparation of the ground, was academic and impracticable. The project for embanking the Thames after the Great Fire is the subject of the third essay. The story that has been current about this is that a fine quay 40ft. wide was actually made, paid for by public money derived from coal dues; that in the course of about 100 years it had disappeared, the Corporation having allowed people to build on it, and that the scandal of their fathers' misdeeds was covered by the Corporation of 1821, when they obtained an Act repealing certain sections of old Acts and thereby re-adjusting matters. Mr. Perks goes through all the documents throwing light on this mysterious quay and draws out the situation itself, so as to show first, that there are records indeed of proposals to make such an erection, but no record of any of them having been carried out; and, secondly, that this scheme also would be found to be unpractical in that it was designed for warehouses to face the river; and warehouses would obviously be inconveniently placed at a distance of 40 feet from the river-side. He concludes that the Corporation has been maligned, and that this projected quay was never made at all. The Act of 1821, which had to do with erection of buildings on wharfs between London Bridge and the Temple, so far from being promoted by the Corporation, was carried against their opposition.

وو

In the last of three Appendixes Mr. Perks goes over the evidence, or displays the lack of evidence, for London Bridge ever having been called Trafalgar Bridge. Two letters to The Times in the summer of 1831 suggest and urge the adoption of this name; in 1898 a correspondent in our own columns stated that he had indubitable evidence that the bridge was called Trafalgar Bridge; he did not, however, produce it. At 11 S. xii. 83, an extract was quoted in our columns from the Royal Academy Catalogue of 1817, in which description of aDesign for the iron intended East London or Bridge of Trafalgar' which was to be adorned with appropriate statues and reliefs. It would seem that here, also, somebody's bright idea has been all too lightly handed down as realised fact.

was

a

It would be impertinent to praise the work of an expert like Mr. Perks; we can but direct our readers' attention to it. Unless new matters, of which we have no present knowledge, should turn up, we think the second and third essays will prove conclusive in their respective contentions.

A Pedigree of Stapleton of Greasley, Basford and Nottingham. By Alfred Stapleton. (Swain & Co., Sydney. 38. 6d. net.).

THIS IS pedigree has much human interest. It is concerned in general with not specially gifted or specially prosperous families of the

middle class, whose descent and careers are made out-more or less-from the seventeenth, and are most interesting during the early nineteenth, century. None of them rose to any great eminence, yet several took their share in the wars, voyages or more adventurous trading of their day, and we seem to observe, even in those whose life was exteriorly uneventful and remote from the great, a certain vigour and perhaps discomfort, as if their circumstances Their were too small for their characters. letters contain a fair amount of good detail, and the student of social history, say from 1780 to 1840, might well find the book worth looking through. The compiler's name is wellknown to many of our readers as that of a competent local antiquary and writer, chiefly on Nottingham. He has published a considerable number of books and pamphlets, of which the last appears to be a Catalogue of Notts Crosses. A second edition of his Merry Tales of Gotham was called for in 1910. The London of Our Grandfathers. Arranged and described by Gordon Home. (Homeland Association. 3s. 6d. net).

THE Homeland Association continues its excellent work, patriotic in the finest sense of that word. This new little book, which comes to us under a name all London lovers respect, makes a specially wide and varied appeal, for it concerns the London known and described by the great nineteenth century novel-writers; it includes some reproductions of work of well-known topographical artists, and, containing a still survives with much more that is gone, it enables the middle-aged man to revive his memories, and the young man to work out older history from a basis of what he himself knows. ceded by a sketch from Mr. Gordon Home's There are forty-nine pictures, preAmong the best views are Bryant's P. South Side of New Palace Yard, Westliament once was housed; Tombleson's minster,' showing the buildings in which Par'Hungerford Market' Schnebbelie's Gabled Houses in Ship Yard, Temple Bar'; and Tallis's Somerset House.' The 1850 view of the Bank and the Mansion House, looking down King William Street; the page of old London characters; St. Dunstan's-in-the-West in 1832 and the two views of old galleried inns may be taken as examples of what has disappeared. Two most interesting drawings are E. W. Cooke's Southwark End of Old London Bridge' and his New London Bridge' (low water) as the bridge appeared in 1832.

certain amount of what

6

6

answer queries

CAN

AN ANYONE help the Enquirer to find a Collection of OLD SAXON DEEDS referring to the BENTHALL FAMILY OF SHROPSHIRE? Certain Saxon Deeds without date were sold when Mr. Francis Benthall died in 1903, and were bought by Mr. Boone. It is believed Mr. Boone is dead and his Col'lection of Deeds dispersed. If anyone having any of his Deeds relating to the Three Saxon Thains Elmer, Elmund and Alward, who founded the Benthall Family, or to any of the early Benthalls mentioned in Lants' Pedigree of 1599, will communicate with Box No. 238, "Notes & Queries," they will be conferring the greatest assistance to the Heralds College and the Family. The enquirer will be prepared to help with any expense connected with allowing the Heralds College to see the Deeds in question. The Examiners must see these Deeds before the earlier part of the Family Pedigree can be registered.

SIXPENCE.

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INDEX to VOLUME CLII.

THE HE TITLE PAGE and SUBJECT INDEX now to VOL. CLII. (Jan.-June, 1927) is ready. Orders, accompanied by a remit"NOTES AND tance, should be sent to QUERIES," 20, High Street, High Wycombe, Bucks, England, direct or through local newsagents and booksellers. The Index is also on sale at our London office, 22, Essex Street, Strand, W.C.2.

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local bookbinders. The Cases are also on sale at 22, Essex Street, Strand, W.C.2. Price 3s., postage 3d.

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QUERIES: Eliza Fenning-Mme de Chatenay"Bagzane Stigmatization: protestant instance-Church of the Holy Sepulchre, StepneyArms for identification-Births at midnight"" "Ich Dien," 154-Bown Surname--Anne Irwin and Edmund Walsh-Dryden Family-Heraldic: Talbot of Spreyton-Mourner as occupation, 155— Vayro Cronshay of Hartest-cum-Boxted The Byzette, Paris-Hogge Family of Sussex-" Hell for leather "-"Out of the top drawer," 156. REPLIES:-Old Signs in the Strand, 156-King's Ships built at Bursledon, 158-John Pond, astronomer royal,159--Sand pictures-Theatres in the City-Public way through or under churches ---Casts-" Vendue "-Arms for identification, 160 Graves's Spiritual Quixote'-The St. IsidorMonmouth Street, 161.

THE LIBRARY:

'Chaucer's Constance and

2/6

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IN VOLUME XII (1926) IN THE APRIL AND JULY PARTS WAS ISSUED A REPRODUCTION OF HORWOOD'S CELEBRATED PLAN OF LONDON, 1792-1799

IN 16 FOLDING PLATES,

showing every square, street and court, almost every house being numbered as it was in the 18th century. The Plan is accompanied by copious notes, rich in theatrical facts, and is now for the first time offered in a convenient and inexpensive form

"

of immense value to the historian and the scholar."-Glasgow Herald. RARE

18th CENTURY PLANS OF ROME & PARIS.

Appeared in Volume XI, 1925. microscopic lovely plates of

beauty."-Review of Reviews.

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Memorabilia.

ON Saturday last (Aug. 20) The Times printed the account sent them from their correspondent in Rome of the project of making a new edition of the general catalogue of the Vatican Library. Within recent years the Vatican has received numerous gifts of complete libraries and it is in good part the need for including these which has brought the decision about. Mgr. Mercati, Prefect of the Library (in which office he is successor of Mgr. Ratti, the present Pope) announces that the new catalogue will be arranged according to the most modern methods. The expenses will be largely met out of the gift made to the Vatican by the Carnegie Peace Foundation. The Pope has decided to make addition to the Library buildings, which again, will facilitate both preservation and use of books and MSS. THE Racing correspondent of The Times (Aug. 22) setting vigorously forth what the friends of horse-racing must do if they are to withstand the competition of the cheaper, more easily accessible, and more comfortably to be enjoyed dog-racing, has some interesting remarks on the way the public spends its Saturday afternoons. says that one of the features of the attendance upon the greyhounds at the White City is the number of the ladies. "As anyone who goes racing regularly knows well, it is impossible to take a lady racing unless one is a member or can obtain ladies' badges for the members lawns. Whatever may be said to the contrary," and this is the interesting sentence "the tendency of the present

day-and it is growing rapidly-is for men to spend their leisure times with their wives and families.

AN interesting Roman Catholic church was consecrated last Saturday (Aug. 20) at Alfreton, Derbyshire. Built in a style adapted from a primitive Roman design, it has had the priest-in-charge, Father Joseph Heald, for architect and clerk of the works. Contributions to it have come from all parts of the world. The candlesticks for the altar are the gift of Cardinal Merry del Val in memory of Pope Pius X. The dedication is Christ the King. also interesting-the first in England to

WE noticed in the Manchester Guardian

of Aug. 22 particulars of the payments which are paid in the salt district of Northwich as compensation for injury to property by subsidence. The Salt Compensation Board for the most part bears the cost of this, operating under an Act of 1891. The Board may levy a toll not exceeding 3d. per 1,000 gallons on all the brine pumped in its area. The toll during thirty years has yielded £175,843 6s. 4d., and sums in payment of claims have amounted £113,857 11s. 8d. Besides this £29,891 5s. has been paid in respect of commutation claims, of which seventy have been dealt with, and £23,477 13s. 4d. has been expended in the purchase of sinking and derelict properties-seventy-nine in number. AC CCORDING to a Home Office return of

to

foreigners who landed, or departed or were refused admission during the six months ending with last June, 171,831 persons landed, 147,568 left, and 1,049 were refused admission. Of the restrictions Italy has the largest number, 142, and France the Americans were the second largest, 104. most numerous both as comers (53,369) and goers (38,698); France and Germany come second and third in the list of arrivals. Russians were fairly numerous. The figures in each list were a good deal higher than those for the corresponding period of last

WE learn from The Times that Plas

Newydd at Llangollen, the home of the Ladies of Llangollen has been offered to the town authorities by its owner, Lord Tankerville. Lady Eleanor Butler, the elder of the ladies died in 1829 at the age of 90, and Miss Ponsonby, at the age of 76, in 1831. Their story, their quaint masculine attire. the distinguished visitors who sought them