"SLAD" OR "SLADE" (5th S. xi. 348, 495; xii. 18, 57.)-At Gravelley Hill, close to Birmingham, is an old road running between two ranges of undulating hills called "The Slade." I have reason to believe that the name is one of considerable antiquity. I can speak confidently of its being so called for more than a century, from hearing aged members of my own family so describe it more than fifty years ago. The ground in the neighbourhood is peculiarly formed, and the road so called looks as if some mighty boulder had "slid" along between the hills, forming a level road for more than a mile in length. The town of Birmingham is now spreading out its mighty arms and including this most beautiful spot in its embrace. Villas are springing up, and on my last visit I was surprised to find that this glade had been rechristened, and was in the future to be known as Slade Road. FATHER FRANK. Birmingham. stony ravine called “The Slade." It is assumed to 66 66 "GINNEL" "VENNELS" (5th S. x. 388; xi. 97, 137, 197; xii. 57.)-Roquefort, vol. ii. p. 696, says: Venelle, sentier, chemin, ruelle, passage étroit, allée, corridor, en bas Bret. vanelle." "Gattel, tom. ii. p. 329, says: Venelle, petite rue. Il est vieux, et ne s'est conservé que dans cette phrase proverb. Enfiler la venelle, prendre la fuite."" Gattel adds that, according to Ducange, venella is a diminutive of vena. He ends his notice thus : "Varron, ajoute Ménage, a remarqué que les anciens Latins disoient vena pour via, rue, chemin." Ducange (Adelung), tom. vi. p. 744, writes: "Venella et venula, viculus, angiportus, via strictior, Gallis venelle, quod venæ, ut ruga rugæ in corpore speciem referat: alii a venire deducunt." In my copy of Ducange it is venula which is expressly derived from vena. E. C. G. There is a farmhouse called the Vinnals half semiter, dictum" (L. L., v. 6, 10). "De via in Plymouth. DEFNIEL "SAUNTERER" (5th S. x. 246, 436; xi. 117, 337; In the village of Mobberley, Cheshire, a portion xii. 174.)-I propose as a derivation of this vexed of the road which runs between two high banks is word the Lat. semita, a by-path, adj. semitarius, called "The Slade." There is another, and appa- used by Catullus. Varro says, "Qua ibant, ab rently an older, road, but which is now only a foot-itu iter appellarunt; qua id anguste, semita ut way, running along the top of one of the banks, past some cottages, and communicating again with the lower end of the slade. I have always imagined that this was the original road, when possibly the slade itself was merely a rough, wooded "drumble," as we call it in Cheshire. I do not remember the banks of the slade being wooded, but I remember them when they were rough, uncultivated, and unenclosed, with several large trees standing upon them. There is a curious mistake in the new Ordnance parish maps. The sappers who surveyed the parish have, no doubt, been told that a certain very old cottage is called "Slade Cottage," but the name not being understood, it is put down in the map "Slate Cottage," which is not a very appropriate name for a house that has always been thatched and has not a slate upon its roof. Norton Hill, Runcorn. ROBERT HOLLAND. By reference to back numbers of "N. & Q.," under the head of "Sleight: Slade," various comments will be found. In one of them I gave the term as from "Sax. slidan to slide," having reference to the sides, slopes, or declivities of hills, &c., which interpretation has never yet been con HENRY NUGENT BELL (5th S. xii. 69, 234.) – The Hastings family could not have been very strict in "buying up" the copies of Mr. Bell's romantic and interesting account of the Huntingdon earldom, for I have one copy, if not two copies, of it, picked up of late years at second-hand book shops. E. WALFORD, M.A. Hampstead, N.W. were probably of Hawkhead, not Halkhead. I Hampstead, N.W. WORCESTERSHIRE WORDS AND TERMINALS (5th MAYHEW's explanation of the word Bredwardine S. xi. 185, 231, 292; xii. 236.)—Referring to MR. (ante, p. 237), I think he will find that, if it be from the Welsh, "dinas" would come first instead of last, as its equivalent does in his English, "the Hill Fort by the Water." I am not much of a In the parish of Plumstead, Kent, is a deep, Welsh scholar, but I suspect his Welsh would troverted. Castle Bromwich. C. CHATTOCK. have to run thus, "Dinas+bre+dwr," and this A DEFINITION OF METAPHYSICS (5th S. xi. 468; xii. 54, 113, 213.)-My Mathewsiana are scattered in several volumes, and since writing the note, ante, p. 113, I have found that published by Limbird and quoted by MR. BATES, and another of the Home Circuit, published by Duncombe. The lecture of Prof. McSillergrip is so differently given in the latter that I think it may be worth insertion, especially as these wretched piracies are the only approach to reports :— "In the course of my rambles near Leather Lane I was struck with the following signboard, The Parthenon, or Mechanical Athenæum.' Curiosity prompted me to enter into this chosen retreat of science, where my ears were polluted by a strong Scottish accent proceeding from Mr. Sandy McSillergrip, who was delivering a lecture on the arts and sciences to a chosen congregation of disciples. He divided all the arts and sciences into biography, geography, philology, conchology, and various other ologies. Of nerology he said that it was of especial use to gentlemen hairdressers, who were in the habit of smoothing the chins of the public; and he also told his pupils that craniology could only be studied near the London Docks. Botany, he said, could be learnt at Covent Garden, where they might be able to extract the cube root; and phrenology, or free knowledge, was to be discovered at charity schools, where the heads of the children were always well bumped. Metaphysics he thus described: When one man tells another what he dinna understand himself, and argues about it, that is metaphysics. Last of all he told his pupils that mnemonics, or the art of memory, was of light [qu. great] importance when they must recollect to pay sixpence at the door for the lecture."--The Home Circuit, or Cockney Gleaning, p. 22 (Duncombe, 188, Fleet Street, no date, pp. 24). The Home Circuit was given in 1827. stands." In the Life of Charles Mathews, by Mrs. Mathews, London, 1839, 4 vols., 8vo., in vol. iii. p. 573, is a folding plate representing Mathews in his various characters in the Home Circuit. The centre figure is Prof. McSillergrip. On the margin below is: "Gentlemen, metaphysic means this: it is when two men talk together about what they don't understand, in a way that nobody else underThere are other folding plates, rather clumsily done, which freshen our recollections of Mathews less vividly than the carelessly drawn and hastily coloured sketches of Duncombe and Limbird. I have heard John Hamilton Reynolds, Adolphus, and other friends of Mathews describe his indignation at his words being stolen and misrepresented. He said that when the whole audience was in silent expectation, and he heard the scratch of a reporter's pen, he felt in such a rage that he longed to rush from the stage and tear the rascal to pieces. I have written this hoping that it may be acceptable to the remaining few who saw The Mathews, and to those who did not, but who are (5th S. xi. 104, 189, 214, 238, 497.)-I am sorry to 208, 238) was the son of Peregrine Lascelles, who 170, 259.)— "The greater the truth," &c. at a trial, adding, “If the language used was true, the Miscellaneous. NOTES ON BOOKS, &c. Holbein. By Joseph Cundall.-Turner. By W. Cosmo THE series of "Great Artists" gathers strength by going, Monkhouse. (Sampson Low & Co.) and bids fair to justify its raison d'étre, although, according to the laudable spirit of modern criticism, some of the writers of the volumes already issued have not escaped censure for being pretty much what they professed to be. Like the series of "Great Authors" issued by Macmillan, the intention of the projectors of this one was, if we reto present the latest state of information in a compact, collect rightly, not so much to be "new and original " as readable, and trustworthy form. This, at all events, would appear to have been the view of Mr. Cundall, the editor, whose volume on Holbein might serve as a model of what in expression, it is as free from baldness on the one hand the rest should be. Accurate in statement and precise Wornum, Mantz, and Woltman in most agreeable form. as luxuriance on the other, and gives us the cream of It is to be regretted that it did not open the collection, as it might have served to harmonize and restrain the wandering impulses of the very various list of contri butors. He has written, we think, on this subject before, and is thoroughly in sympathy with Turner as an artist if not as a man. Moreover, he has apparently been enticed demanded by the very haphazard character of much of into somewhat wider fields of inquiry than the series the existent biographical material and the exaggerated language of some of the critical estimates. Hence his volume has more the value of a fresh contribution to Turner literature than a mere résumé of the "most recent between the loose chronicling of Mr. Thornbury and the transfiguring rhetoric of Mr. Ruskin, whose magical It holds the domain of common senso Mr. Monkhouse's Turner is a volume of unusual merit. authorities." descriptions (and we fully own their magic) too often decline the test of sober examination. Mr. Monkhouse's little book prompts the suggestion that he should carry his investigations still further, and give us that larger life of Turner which is yet unwritten. The Shemitic Origin of the Nations of Western Europe. By J. Pym Yeatman. (Burnes & Oates.) MR. PYM YEATMAN has never been wanting in the courage of his convictions, but these have generally run counter to the opinions held by the great majority of his countrymen, not to speak of historians and men of science. As for our poor "Aryan ancestors," Mr. Yeatman would leave them scarcely even a magni nominis umbra. The inhabitants of the British Islands and the Gauls of France, according to him, are Gaelic Shemites, a portentous designation, which we have been obliged to evolve out of our inner consciousness in order to put his views tersely before our readers. Mr. Yeatman's book contains much curious information on all sorts of collateral points, and we cannot but regret that the bitterness of the feelings which he seems to cherish against what he calls the "Oxford School" of modern historians should prevent his giving us a calmly reasoned argument in support of a different view from that ordinarily accepted as accounting for the facts of Romano-British and Early English history. Gleanings from Bodleian MSS.-Part I. A Short View of the State of Ireland. Written, in 1605, by Sir John Harington, Kt., and now first edited by Rev. W. Dunn Macray, M. A., F.S.A. (Oxford and London, James Parker & Co.) THE MS. collections in the Bodleian Library have lately been made more accessible, and now Mr. Macray proposes to print from time to time such a selection from them as may be made by taking some of those which are too short to form a volume by themselves, and issuing them in a series, in which, however, each part will be complete in itself, with its own notes and index. The proposal is well worthy of support. The present instalment comprises the appeal of Sir John Harington (who was on military service in Ireland at the time, A.D. 1605, and in pecuniary difficulties) that he may be appointed Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Dublin on the death of Archbishop Loftus, which was expected to take place, as indeed it did before the present letter came to hand. The sister country, however, had not to make such an addition to her list of grievances as this strange request conceived at least to be possible. Besides a justification of himself, Sir John Harington has several allusions to the general state of Ireland as well as to its ecclesiastical affairs. The latter should not be left unread by any one who is interested in the condition of the Irish Church at that time. Mr. Macray appears to have done his part as an editor very carefully. For one allusion unnoticed, on p. 1, we will refer him to Cicero, In Verrem, Act. ii. lib. ii. cap. 11, which is the authority for the anecdote of Scipio Africanus. The curious story of Bede and the interpretation of S.P.Q.R. at pp. 19, 26, may exercise the ingenuity of the readers of "N. & Q." MESSRS. CASSELL send us Part I. of their new and revised edition of Old and New London. We may feel confident that every opportunity will be taken during the present issue to make the work as complete as possible from every point of view.-We have also before us Part I. of Cassell's Technical Educator.-A third edition of Serjeant Cox's Mechanism of Man (Longmans) is now in progress. From Messrs. M'Caw, Stevenson & Orr, Belfast, we have received the second edition of Lyra Hibernica Sacra; from the Hand and Heart publishing offices, The Home Life of the Prince Consort, by the Rev. C. Bullock, B.D.; from F. E. Longley, The Weather and Climatic Changes; and from Whittaker & Co., the twelfth edition of The Secretary's Assistant. THE Chaucer Society and the Ballad Society make earnest appeals to the lovers of old English poetry and song not to let their work languish for want of funds. carry him beyond himself as he recounts the evil deeds Mr. Furnivall's perfervidum ingenium seems almost to of the "forty members who ought to have paid their subscriptions last year," but who didn't pay 'em." We hope he may this year and other years succeed in getting together the "four-in-hand" which he wants to drive in honour of Chaucer. The Ballad Society wants special help, we learn, to enable it to avail itself of the offer to complete the Roxburghe series, made by our correspondent the Rev. J. W. Ebsworth, whom Mr. William Chappell has chosen for his successor in editorial work. If the members of the society were to double their subscriptions for the current year, we are told, the Roxburghe Ballads might be completed early in 1880. We commend the statement to the serious consideration of the many readers of "N. & Q." who love our old ballads. EARLY ENGLISH TEXT SOCIETY.-We have just received the Eleventh Report of the Committee, written obviously by the Director, the only member of the society, we venture to say, who is not satisfied with the good work that it has accomplished. Upwards of one hundred volumes of our early English literature, edited by some of our best scholars, has the society given to the world, under the direction of Mr. Furnivall, to whose energy we owe not only this admirable society, but also the Chaucer and New Shakspere Societies. Notices to Correspondents. We must call special attention to the following notice: ON all communications should be written the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. PRESBYTER GYRVIANUS.-According to a paragraph in the Weekly Times, Sept. 12, a commission has recently reported to the Prussian Government in favour of ink made from gall nuts, as the best for "documents the preservation of which is important." W. M. M. ("Ave Maria Lane").-Stow, in his Survey of London, says: "At the end of Pater Noster row is Ave Mary lane, so called upon the like occasion of text writers and bead makers then dwelling there." H. (Temple), "Henry VII.'s Instructions," &c., commencing, "Lord Verulam," &c., is again requested to send his name and address. A. L. (Normanton).-The foundation stone was laid in Threadneedle Street, Aug. 3, 1732. E. M. ("Avoure," ante, p. 273) may now wish to rewrite his paper. W. W. (Forest Hill).-Always glad to renew an old acquaintance. J. W. B. P. has not sent his name and address. NOTICE. 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