Notes and Queries, Number 45, September 7, 1850 | Page 3

your readers can inform me of the origin of a somewhat similar custom, applicable to all ships and vessels for sale or hire, by the broom (all old one being generally used) being attached to the mast-head: if of two masts, to the foretop-mast head.
WP.
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LORD PLUNKET AND SAINT AGOBARD.
Some of your readers may remember a speech in parliament by, as I think, Lord Plunket, in which his lordship argued with great eloquence in behalf of the Bill for the Emancipation of the Roman Catholics. Among many passages therein of equal truth and rhetorical power, there was one long afterwards much quoted, paraphrased, and praised. It was that in which he reminded the House, that those for whom he pleaded were fellow-subjects of the same race, offspring of the same Creator, alike believers in the One true God, the equal recipients of His mercies, appealing for {227} His blessings though the medium of the same faith, and looking forward for salvation to the One Intercessor, Mediator, and Sacrifice for all,--men, who, as they did, addressed the Eternal in the form of that "Universal prayer"--Our Father--the authority and the privilege of one common parentage, offered by the all in the union of the same spirit, in the conviction of the same wants, in the aspiration of the same hope. I say, I think Lord Plunket so spoke, for I write from memory dating from the period when George the Third was king. Now be this so: according to the dogmas of some critics, Lord Plunket may be convicted of an eloquent plagiary. Read the following extract from a missive by S. Agobard, to be found in the _Bibl. Vet. Patrum_, tome xiii, page 429., by Galland, addressed "Ad pr?fatum Imperatorem, adversus legem Gundobadi et impia certamina qu? per eam geruntur," and say whether, in spite of the separation of centuries, there does not appear a family likeness, though there were no family acquaintance between them; Saint Agobard being Bishop of Lyons in the ninth centry, and Lord Plunket Attorney-General for Ireland in the nineteenth.
The Saint is pleading against the judical ordeal:
"Illi autem profecti, pr?dicaverunt ubique Domino cooperante; annuntiataque est ab eis omni creatur?; id est, cunetis nationibus mundi; una fides indita per Deum, una spes diffusa per Spiritum Sanctum in cordibus credentium, una caritas nata in omnibus, una voluntas, accensum unum desiderium, tradita una oratio; ut omnes omnino ex diversis gentibus, diversis conditionibus, diverso sexu, nobilitate, honestate, servitute diversa, simul dicant uni Deo, et Patri omnium; Pater Noster qui es, &c., sicut unum Patrem invocantes, ita unam santificationem qu?rentes, unum regnum postulantes, unam adimpletionem voluntatis ejus, sicut fit in coelo optantes; unum sibi panem quotidianum dari precantes et omnibus dimitti debita."
To which other passages might be added, as, in fact, S. Agobard pursues the one idea until he hunts it down to the one effect of sameness and common antithesis. Should we say Lord Plunket had read these passages, and is thereby convicted of eloquent plagiary? I say, No! Lauder then equally convicted Milton of trespassing on the thoughts of others, by somewhat apposite quotations from the classics. We are, in truth, too much inclined to this. The little, who cannot raise themselves to the stature of the great, are apt to strive after a socialist level, by reducing all to one same standard--their own. Truth is common to all ages, and will obtain utterance by the truthful and the eloquent throughout all time.
S.H.
Athen?um, August 12.
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NOTES ON THE SECOND EDITION OF MR. CUNNINGHAM'S HANDBOOK OF LONDON
14. _Long Acre._ Mr. Cunningham, upon the authority of Parton's _History of St. Giles's_, says:
"First known as the Elms, then called Seven Acres, and since 1612, from the length of a certain slip of ground, then first used as a public pathway, as Long Acre."
The latter part of this statement is incorrect. The Seven Acres were known as Long Acre as early as 1552, when they were granted to the Earl of Bedford. See _Strype_, B. vi. p. 88.
Machyn, in his _Diary_, printed by the Camden Society, p. 21., under the date A.D. 1556, has the following allusion to the _Acre_:
"The vj day of December the Abbot of Westminster went a procession with his convent. Before him went all the Santuary men with crosse keys upon their garments, and after went iij for murder: on was the Lord Dacre's sone of the North, was wypyd with a shett abowt him for kyllyng of on Master West, squyre, dwellyng besyd ... and anodur theyff that dyd long to one of Master Comtroller ... dyd kylle Recherd Eggylston the Comtroller's tayller, and kylled him in the _Long Acurs_, the bak-syd Charyng Crosse."
15. _Norfolk House, St. James's Square._ The present Norfolk House was built from a design by R. Brettingham, in 1742,