deed the whole is very sufficiently portrayed by the Chequer, which has usurped its place as a sign, though useless in any other respect. Allusions to the lattice are scattered abundantly through the pages of our old dramatists, who in fact are excellent historians of the manners and habits of their own time. Thus Ben Jonson, in Every Man in his Humour, Act 3, Scene 3 : "Cob. I dwell, sir, at the sign of the Water Tankard, hard by the Green Lattice: I have paid scot and lot there any time these eighteen years. Clem. To the Green Lattice? Cob. No, sir; to the parish. Marry, I have seldom scap'd scot-free at the Lattice." Ĥence Green Lattice, or as it is now improperly called, Green Lettuce Lane, in the city. Thus too Serjeant Hall, in the Tatler, directs a letter to his brother, "at the Red Lettuce (Lattice) in Butcher's Row." Again, we have in Shakspeare, Henry iv. Part 11. Act 2, Scene 2. Page. He called me even now, my lord, through a Red Lattice, and I could discern no part of his face from the window; at last I spied his eyes, and methought he had made two holes in the alewife's new petticoat, and peeped through." CHESS. The term Check-mate arose from the Persian schahmat, and was introduced by the Moors into Europe, and by them delivered to the Spaniards, with the game of chess; for, in the Persian, schah signifies a king, and mat, slaughter; to which latter also the Hebrew agrees. CHURCH BELLS. The invention of bells, such as are hung in the towers or steeples of Christian churches, is, by Polydore Virgil and others, ascribed to Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, a city of Campania, about the year 400. It is said that the names Nolæ and Campanæ, the one referring to the city, the other to the country, were for that reason given to them. In the time of Clothair, king of France, and in the year 610, the army of the king was frighted from the siege of the city of Sens, by ringing the bells of St. Stephen's church. In the times of popery, bells were baptized and anointed, Oleo Chrismatis; they were exorcised, and blessed by the bishop, from a belief that when these ceremonies were performed, they had power to drive the devil out of the air, to calm tempests, to extinguish fire, and even to recreate the dead. The ritual for these ceremonies is contained in the Roman Pontifical; and it was usual in their baptism to give each bell the name of some saint. In Chauncey's History of Hertfordshire, page 383, is the relation of the baptism of a set of bells in Italy with great ceremony, a short time before the writing of that book. By an old chartulary, once in possession of Weever the antiquary, it appears that the bells of the priory of Little Dunmow, in Essex, were, anno 1501, new cast, and baptised by the following names: Prima in honore Sancti Michaelis Archangeli. Quarta in honore Assumptionis Beatæ Mariæ. Quinta in honore Sancta Trinitatis, et omnium Sanctorum. The bells at Osney Abbey, near Oxford, were very famous their names were Douce, Clement, Austin, Hautecter (potius Hautcleri), Gabriel, and John.-Appendix to Hearne's Collection of Discourses by Antiquaries, No. 11. Near Old Windsor is a public-house, vulgarly called the Bells of Bosely. This house was originally built for the accommodation of bargemen and others, navigating the river Thames between London and Oxford. It has a sign of six Bells, i. e. the Bells of Osney. In the Funeral Monuments of Weever are the following particulars relating to bells. "Bells had frequently these inscriptions on them: "Funera plango, fulgura frango, sabbata pango. Excito lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos."-Page 122. 1 "In the little sanctuary at Westminster, King Edward III. erected a clochier, and placed therein three bells for the use of St. Stephen's chapel about the biggest of them were cast in the metal these words: : "King Edward made mee thirtie thousand weight and three; Take mee down and way mee, and more you shall find mee. But these bells being to be taken down in the reign of King Henry VIII., one writes underneath with a coal, "But Henry the Eight, Will bait me of my weight."-Page 492. This last distich alludes to a fact mentioned by Stow in his Survey of London, ward of Farringdon Within, to wit, that near St. Paul's school stood a clochier, in which were four bells, called Jesus' bells, the greatest in all England, against which Sir Miles Partridge staked a hundred pounds, and won them of King Henry VIII. at a cast of dice. It is said that the foundation of the fortunes of the Corsini family in Italy was laid by an ancestor of it, who, at the dissolution of religious houses, purchased the bells of abbeys and other churches, and by the sale of them in other countries acquired a very great estate. Nevertheless it appears that abroad there are bells of great magnitude. In the steeple of the great church at Roan, in Normandy, is a bell with this inscription : "Je suis George de Ambois, Qui trente cinque mille pois; "I am George of Ambois, Thirtie six thousand shall find me."-Ibid. And it is common tradition that the bells of King's College chapel, in the university of Cambridge, were taken by Henry V. from some church in France, after the battle of Agincourt. They were taken down some years ago, and sold to Phelps, the bell-founder, in Whitechapel, who melted them down. The practice of ringing bells in change is said to be peculiar to this country, but the antiquity of it is not easily to be ascertained; there are in London several societies of ringers, particularly one called the college youths of this, it is said, Sir Matthew Hale, lord chief justice of the court of King's Bench, was, in his youth, a member; and in the life of this learned and upright judge, written by Bishop Burnet, some facts are mentioned which favour this report. In England the practice of ringing is reduced to a science, and peals have been composed which bear the names of the inventors. Some of the most celebrated peals now known were composed about fifty years ago by one Patrick: this man was a maker of barometers; in his advertisements he styled himself Torricellian operator, from Torricelli, who invented instruments of this kind. In the year 1684 one Abraham Rudhall, of the city of Gloucester, brought the art of bell-founding to great perfection. His descendants in succession have continued the business of casting bells; and by a list published by them, it appears that at Lady-day, 1774, the family, in peals and odd bells, had cast to the amount of 3594. The peals of St. Dunstan's in the East, and St. Bride's, London; St. Martin's in the Fields, Westminster; are in the number. COACHES AND SEDAN CHAIRS. The use of coaches was introduced into England by Fitz-Allan, Earl of Arundel, in the year 1519. At first they were only drawn by two horses. It was the favourite Buckingham, who, about the year 1619, began to have them drawn by six horses, which, an old historian tells us," was wondered at as a novelty, and imputed to him as a mastering pride." Before that time, ladies chiefly rode on horseback, either single on their palfreys, or double, behind some person on a pillion. -The Duke of Buckingham introduced sedan-chairs about the same period. COCKNEY. The term Cockney applied to the natives of the city of London, or that part of it, in ancient times, enclosed by a wall, and supposed to live within reach of the sound of Bow bell, is of greater antiquity than the custom is commendable. Shakspeare makes use of it in a ludicrous sense; but Mr. Douce, in his comments on certain passages of the plays of that excellent dramatist, seems to think, "that it originates in an Utopian region of indolence and luxury, formerly denominated the country of Cocaigne." However that may be the fact, we know other English writers, anterior to Shakspeare, used it in the same sense. As the inhabitants of all great cities live in habits of comparative ease and luxury with those in the country (and particularly so when the word was introduced), Mr. Douce's solution appears extremely probable. At present we seldom hear it applied except in a playful way. Indeed the writers for newspapers annually indulge in witticisms upon the efforts of the Londoners in sporting, when the first day of September arrives; and describe, with no small degree of whimsicality, the supposed mistakes of the cockney in shooting cats for hares, tame ducks for wild, pigs, dogs, and poultry for game; and, to complete the whole, one is made to kill an owl, which he imagined to be a nondescript; but is afterwards convinced, to the dread of his eternal punishment, it was nothing less than a cherubim. CORINTHIAN ORDER. A marriageable young lady of Corinth fell ill, and died. After the interment, her nurse collected together sundry ornaments with which she used to be pleased; and, putting them into a basket, she placed it near her tomb. Lest they should be injured by the weather, she covered the basket with a tile. It happened that the basket was placed on a root of acanthus, which in the spring shot forth its leaves, and these turning up the side of the basket, naturally formed a kind of volute, |