6 laid down, and the charges of passing his patent.' Also there is a strict injunction that all money paid in is to be kept as a separate fund. Selden does not tell us how far these excellent intentions were carried out in fact, and perhaps he did not choose to inquire. Within a year'a certain controversie touching Place and Precedence between the younger sons of Viscounts and Barons and the Baronets' arose out of some dark words contained in the Letters Patents of the said Baronets.' It was solemnly heard by James I. in person with the aid of his Council, and decided in favour of the younger sons of viscounts and barons by a long and pompous decree. This decree contains the king's promise to the baronets not to create any new title or dignity beneath that of a Lord of Parliament and superior or equal to a baronet's, which has ever since been repeated in the patents issued to new baronets. And now you are at least as well qualified to discuss the Honourable Order and its privileges as Sir Augustus Pampesford. Mr. Follett explains to me (for 1 really knew nothing about it) that the grievance of our Order consists in the Crown having declared that the sons of Lords of Appeal (who are barons only for life) are to go before us. I suppose the Crown took good advice, and Mr. Follett as much as said he could see nothing in the point ; the question seems to be whether a Lord of Appeal is a real baron, or, if you please, whether, if James I. had made Lords of Appeal, he would have considered them real barons. It might have been a pretty question for Jacobean heralds to argue. But I hope Sir Augustus will not meet our good brother Charles in Hans Place or elsewhere while his head is full of this, as Charles would certainly deliver a discourse of half an hour, proving to Sir Augustus, on the most infallible Liberal principles, that he has no business to exist. Perhaps I should have swallowed formulas too if I had stayed at home. Margaret and I have performed our dinner at the Squares. The dulness was just what you told me to expect, with the addition of their long dining-room being horribly cold ; you know they are people who live by the calendar; so they have taken down their curtains and reduced their fires because the equinox is past. Well, 'I have seen colder,' as an early saint said when they asked him how he could bear standing in ice-cold water; and perhaps I have seen duller at Indian official entertainments. But formal dinner-parties are a necessary evil to me at best. Margaret is anxious to keep me up to my social duties, and tells VOL. V.-NO. 25, N.8. 3 a me we really owe it to the neighbours. No doubt she is right, especially as you do not contradict her. Jem has written to me from S.T.C., and it won't do to show to Mr. Weekes at all-in fact I can think of nothing better than sending it on to you to be out of harm's way. Not that Laura would be pleased with it either, so treat it with the discretion due to a demi-official communication. By the way, you know Laura's little habit of questioning people about their letters and wanting to see them. She can very seldom—perhaps never—be gratified so far as mine are concerned. As to Weekes, I must tell him that Jem is still too busy to answer in detail, which is true so far as it goes. How shall I have my Tod's ' Rajasthan' bound? He is barely holding together. You need not tell me to ask the Vicar. I want the benefit of your taste as well as his wisdom. Your affectionate brother, RICHD. ETCHINGHAM. a [ENCLOSURE.] From James Etchingham, Assistant Tutor of Silvertoe College, Oxbridge, to Sir Richard Etchingham, Tolcarne. MY DEAR SIR RICHARD,—It is the end of term, true enough, but with that end comes a business called Collections, not conducive to leisure for tutors. Anyhow, I don't see how I could answer a string of questions from a man I have never seen which range over the whole art of cycling, and every part and fitting of a machine, from lamp to backstays. The short answer to about three-quarters of them is that it is a matter of taste, and he had better find out what suits him and stick to it. Otherwise the Rev. Septimus may take in a penny cycling paper and become a valued correspondent. He can get as many answers as he likes that way, and I should think it would just do for him. If you wanted to know anything I could tell you for yourself, that would be quite different. But I guess I may be riding about your country in the vacation, and it will be simpler to call in person one day and see how you are getting on. However, our scholar Blunham was in my rooms when I got Mr. Weekes's requisitions. He is an odd fish : I think I pointed him out to you when you were here. He is said to have dropped his eyeglass one Sunday when he was reading the first lesson in chapel (it was a chapter of Proverbs), and to have found it less trouble to invent the rest of the chapter than to pick up the glass. He has taken to the wheel as the most independent pastime, and rather taken to me because I don't mind what he says, don't expect him to say anything, and am indulgent to his experiments in scholarship, even when I have to point out to him that he should reserve originality till he is through the schools. We were going out for a ride. I showed him Mr. Weekes, and he twinkled silently. During the ride he seemed meditative, and latish in the evening he came in and asked me abruptly if I had heard of the Professor of Aramaic's last discovery of some new fragments apparently belonging to an apocryphal wisdom-book. Now Aramaic is not a Greats subject, and so I gave him my thirteenth variation this week on the theme that a fourth-year scholar who aims at a first should not be too much interested in too many things at once. He remarked that he had no intention of reading the original, but had obtained a private copy of the Professor's translation in the first draft, and thought I might like to see it. This is what he offered me. As a pair of wheels that run truly with a pleasant murmuring, so is the talk of man and wife in an house which is well ruled. As the noise of a cheap crock which rattleth, so is dissension in the house of a niggard and a sloven. The inches of our gear are three score and ten, and though there be some so strong that they ride four score, yet is their speed but labour and sorrow at the day's end when they fetch their wind short upon an hill. Blessed is the damsel whose cruse of oil faileth not, and whc looketh to her own tires; and behold, he that taketh her to wife shall prosper. a Three things are plagues to a wheelman, yea, and a fourth is abominable: a boy which leadeth an unruly horse, and a swine which strayeth in the road, and a rash woman among traffic which regardeth not the right hand or the left; but the most grievous is a County Council which scattereth heaps of stones in the highway and saith, It is well mended. My son, beware of inventors which promise marvellous things with their mouth, lest when thou puttest thy trust in their many inventions thou be overthrown in stony places. Take heed unto thy riding in strange boroughs, and fall not into transgression of their by-laws, lest thou be worsted in striving with them that swear valiantly before the judgment-seat. Of two manner of people thou shalt have a care, and flee from the third as an host of the heathen: a deaf man which walketh in the darkness, and children which run violently out of school at noontide, and a constable with girded loins who lurketh after sunsetting. Perhaps even Mr. Weekes need not be warned against the current advertisement of this type : Genuine Offer. SELVEDGE & TRIMMINGS Have taken up the Cycle Trade as a branch of their world-wide Drapery Stores. Selvedge & Trimmings will present every Lady Customer who sends in One Hundred of their Five-Shilling Coupons within the half-year with one of their dainty and deliciously running Roly Poly Cycles. On ROLY POLY CYCLES; Holy Missioners, mind your souls DEAR MADAM,-Have you passed your youth? You will pass him easily if you are riding a ROLY POLY CYCLE and he is riding anything else. A fair customer writes:-After being unable for many years to take any kind of exercise, I have been for a fifty-mile ride on a ROLY POLY CYCLE. My doctor agrees with me that I shall never want to ride any other. You will never want to repair your ROLY POLY CYCLE after its first season. Madame Sarah Bernhardt writes:-I never fully realised the joys of decadence before I coasted down the Eiffel Tower on a ROLY POLY CYCLE. Ask for SELVEDGE & TRIMMINGS's Illuminated Cycle Catalogue. Here comes a man with an essay on the Platonic Number. I know it will be about everything except the text.-Yours most truly, rigidly, and rotarily, JAMES ETCHINGHAM. HAVANA IN 1870. 1 SUBSEQUENTLY to the adventure related in a recent number of the CORNHILL' the party of shipwrecked mariners, of which I was the humblest member, were landed at Havana. At that time, as we soon discovered, the whole island was in the throes of revolution, although to the eyes of such casual observers as we were evidences of prosperity abounded. When we entered the narrow passage leading to the restricted waters of the harbour all hands gazed with eager interest upwards to the left hand where, perched upon a beetling precipice, the boary fortress of the Moro Castle frowned down upon the smiling city. Of its appearance to seaward I remember little, but, once having rounded the sandy spit running down from the city to the harbour's mouth, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Moro Castle was designed to overawe the inhabitants of Havana much more than to repel an invading fleet. At first sight it appeared utterly impregnable, for the cliffs rose perpendicularly from the harbour, in many places with an actual overhang at the summit, and in few of less altitude (to our judgment) than 400 feet. The first impression one gets of the harbour is that it is far too small for its requirements. The vessels which crowded its waters seemed far too many for safety in case of a gale arising, while two or three good-sized stretches of water were quite unoccupied by any craft larger than open boats. That, we afterwards learned, was owing to their shallowness. The friendly Frenchman who was carrying us, being anxious to resume his homeward journey, only sailed in as far as the first wharves and dropped anchor. The Captain immediately went ashore to the British Consul, made arrangements for our transfer, and returned. In a few minutes our brief sea-farewells were said, and we were in a shore boat bound for the stairs. Looking backwards we saw our friendly hosts already at the windlass, and almost before we reached the landing-place the Potosi had weighed and was swinging seaward again. We landed under the watchful eyes of at least a dozen guardacostas, who looked as though they at any rate had their doubts 1. My First Shipwreck,' CORNHILL MAGAZINE, December 1897. a |