representative system, and which our ancestors have been careful to hand down to posterity in a word, viz., Parliament.

FRANCISCUS.

"INCIDIS IN SCYLLAM, CUPIENS VITARE CHARYBDIM."

I should be sorry to see this fine old proverb in metaphor passed over with no better notice than that which seems to have been assigned to it in Boswell's Johnson.

Erasmophilos, a correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine in 1774, quotes a passage from Dr. Jortin's Life of Erasmus, vol. ii. p. 151., which supplies the following particulars, viz.:—

1. That the line was first discovered by Galeottus Martius of Narni, A.D. 1476.

2. That it is in lib. v. 301. of the "Alexandreis," a poem in ten books, by Philippe Gualtier (commonly called "de Chatillon," though in reality a native of Lille, in Flanders).

3. That the context of the passage in which it occurs is as follows:—

where the poet apostrophises Darius, who, while flying from Alexander, fell into the lands of Bessus. (See Selections from Gent. Mag. vol. ii. p. 199. London, 1814.)

C. FORBES.

This celebrated Latin verse, which has become proverbial, has a very obscure authority, probably not known to many of your readers. It is from Gualtier de Lille, as has been remarked by Galeottus Martius and Paquier in their researches. This Gualtier flourished in the thirteenth century. The verse is extracted from a poem in ten books, called the "Alexandriad," and it is the 301st of the 5th book; it relates to the fate of Darius, who, flying from Alexander, fell into the hands of Bessus. It runs thus:—

As honest JOHN BUNYAN, to his only bit of Latin which he quotes, places a marginal note: "The Latin which I borrow,"—a very honest way; so I I beg to say that I never saw this "Alexandriad," and that the above is an excerpt from Menagiana, pub. 1715, edited by Bertrand de la Monnoie, wherein may also be found much curious reading and research.

JAMES H. FRISWELL.

A NOTE OF ADMIRATION!

Sir Walter Scott, in a letter to Miss Johanna Baillie, dated October 12, 1825, (Lockhart's Life of Sir W. S., vol. vi. p. 82.), says,—

"I well intended to have written from Ireland, but alas! as some stern old divine says, 'Hell is paved with good intentions.' There was such a whirl of laking, and boating, and wondering, and shouting, and laughing, and carousing—" [He alludes to his visiting among the Westmoreland and Cumberland lakes on his way home, especially] "so much to be seen, and so little time to see it; so much to be heard, and only two ears to listen to twenty voices, that upon the whole I grew desperate, and gave up all thoughts of doing what was right and proper on post-days, and so all my epistolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I suppose, 'the burning marle' of the infernal regions."

How easily a showy absurdity is substituted for a serious truth, and taken for granted to be the right sense. Without having been there, I may venture to affirm that "Hell is not paved with good intentions, such things being all lost or dropt on the way by travellers who reach that bourne;" for, where "Hope never comes," "good intentions" cannot exist any more than they can be formed, since to fulfil them were impossible. The authentic and emphatical figure in the saying is, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions;" and it was uttered by the "stern old divine," whoever he might be, as a warning not to let "good intentions" miscarry for want of being realized at the time and upon the spot. The moral, moreover, is manifestly this, that people may be going to hell with "the best intentions in the world," substituting all the while well-meaning for well-doing.

J.M.G

Hallamshire.

THE EARL OF NORWICH AND HIS SON GEORGE LORD GORING.

As in small matters accuracy is of vital consequence, let me correct a mistake which I made, writing in a hurry, in my last communication about the two Gorings (Vol. ii., p. 65.). The Earl of Norwich was not under sentence of death, as is there stated, on January 8, 1649. He was then a prisoner: he was not tried and sentenced till March.²

The following notice of the son's quarrels with his brother cavaliers occurs in a letter printed in Carte's bulky appendix to his bulky Life of the Duke of Ormond. As this is an unread book, you may think it worth while to print the passage, which is only confirmatory of Clarendon's account of the younger Goring's proceedings in the West of England in 1645. The letter is from Arthur Trevor to Ormond, and dated Launceston, August 18, 1645.

"Mr. Goring's army is broken and all his men in disorder. He hates the council here, and I find plainly there is no love lost; they fear he will seize on the Prince, and he, that they will take him: what will follow hereupon may be foretold, without the aid of the wise woman on the bank. Sir John Colepeper was at Court lately to remove him, to the discontent of many. In short, the war is at an end in the West; each one looks for a ship, and nothing more.

"Lord Digby and Mr. Goring are not friends; Prince Rupert yet goes with Mr. Goring, but how long that will hold, I dare not undertake, knowing both their constitutions."

It will be observed that the writer of the letter, though a cavalier, here calls him Mr. Goring, when as his father was created Earl of Norwich in the previous year, he was Lord Goring in cavalier acceptation.

He is indiscriminately called Mr. Goring and Lord Goring in passages of letters by cavaliers relating to the campaign in the West of 1645, which occur in Carte's Collection of Letters (vol. i. pp. 59, 60. 81. 86.).

A number of letters about the son, Lord Goring's proceedings in the West in 1645 are printed in the third volume of Mr. Lister's Life of Lord Clarendon.

The Earl of Norwich's second son, Charles, who afterwards succeeded as second earl, commanded a brigade under his brother in the West in 1645. (Bulstrode's Memoirs, p. 142.; Carte's Letters, i. 116. 121.)

Some account of the father, Earl of Norwich's operations against the parliament in Essex in 1648, is given in a curious autobiography of Arthur Wilson, the author of the History of James I., which is printed in Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, book xi. part 5. Wilson was living at the time in Essex.

An interesting fragment of a letter from Goring the son to the Earl of Dorset, written apparently as he was on the point of retiring into France, and dated Pondesfred, January 26, 1646, is printed in Mr. Eliot Warburton's Memoirs of Prince Rupert, iii. 215.

Mr. Warburton, by the way, clearly confounds the father with the son when he speaks of the Earl of Norwich's trial and reprieve (iii. 408.). Three letters printed in Mr. W.'s second volume (pp. 172. 181, 182.), and signed "Goring", are probably letters of the father's, but given by Mr.