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OPINIONS ON ENGLISH HISTORIANS.

II. Lord Clarendon.

"This great historian is always too free with his judgments. But the piety is more eminent than the superstition in this great man's foibles."—Bishop Warburton, note, last edition, vol. vii. p. 590.

"It is to be hoped no more chancellors will write our story, till they can divest themselves of that habit of their profession, apologising for a bad cause."—H. Walpole, Note in Historic Doubts.

"Clarendon was unquestionably a lover of truth, and a sincere friend to the free constitution of his country. He defended that constitution in Parliament, with zeal and energy, against the encroachments of prerogative, and concurred in the establishment of new securities for its protection." —Lord Grenville, Note in Chatham Correspondence, vol. i. p. 113.

"We suffer ourselves to be delighted by the keenness of Clarendon's observations, and by the sober majesty of his style, till we forget the oppressor and the bigot in the historian."—Macaulay, Essays, vol. ii. p. 281.

"There is no historian, ancient or modern, with whose writings it so much behoves an Englishman to be thoroughly conversant, as Lord Clarendon."—Southey, Life of Cromwell.

"The genuine text of the history has only been published in 1826," says Mr. Hallam, who speaks of "inaccuracy as habitual to him;" and further, "as no one, who regards with attachment the present system of the English constitution, can look upon Lord Clarendon as an excellent minister, or a friend to the soundest principles of civil and religious liberty, so no man whatever can avoid considering his incessant deviations from the great duties of an historian as a moral blemish on his character. He dares very frequently to say what is not true, and what he must have known to be otherwise; he does not dare to say what is true, and it is almost an aggravation of this reproach, that he aimed to deceive posterity, and poisoned at the fountain a stream from which another generation was to drink. No defence has ever been set up for the fidelity of Clarendon's history; nor can men, who have sifted the authentic material, entertain much difference of judgment in this respect; though, as a monument of powerful ability and impressive eloquence, it will always be read with that delight which we receive from many great historians, especially the ancient, independent of any confidence in their veracity." —Hallam, Constitutional History, 8vo. vol. ii. p.502.

"His style is a little long-winded; but, on the other hand, his characters may match those of the ancient historians; and one thinks they would know the very men if you were to meet them in society. Few English writers have the same precision, either in describing the actors in great scenes, or the deeds which they performed; he was himself deeply engaged in the scenes which he depicts, and therefore colours them with the individual feeling, and sometimes, doubtless, with the partiality of a partisan. Yet, I think he is, on the whole, a fair writer; for though he always endeavours to excuse King Charles, yet he points out his mistakes and errors, which certainly were neither few nor of slight importance."—Scott, Life by Lockhart, vol. v. p. 146.

Other opinions as to the noble writer will be found in the Life of Calamy, and in Lord Dover's Essay; but I have perhaps trespassed too much on your space.

M.

MISCELLANIES.

Books by the Yard. —Many of your readers have heard of books bought and sold by weight,— in fact it is questionable whether the number of books sold in that way is not greater than those sold "over the counter,"—but few have probably heard of books sold "by the yard." Having purchased at St. Petersburg, the library left by an old Russian nobleman of high rank, I was quite astonished to find a copy of Oeuvres de Frederic II. originally published in 15 vols., divided into 60, to each of which a new title had been printed; and several hundred volumes lettered outside Oeuvres de Miss Burney, Oeuvres de Swift, &c., but containing, in fact, all sorts of French waste paper books. These, as well as three editions of Oeuvres de Voltaire, were all very neatly bound in calf, gilt and with red morrocco backs. My curiosity being roused, I inquired into the origin of these circumstances, and learnt that during the reign of Catherine, every courtier who had hopes of being honoured by a visit from the Empress, was expected to have a library, the greater or smaller extent of which was to be regulated by the fortune of its possessor, and that, after Voltaire had won the favour of the Autocrat by his servile flattery, one or two copies of his works were considered indispensable. Every courtier was thus forced to have rooms filled with books, by far the greater number of which he never read or even opened. A bookseller of the name of Klostermann, who, being of an athletic stature, was one of the innumerable favourites of the lady, "who loved all things save her lord," was usually employed, not to select a library, but to fill a certain given space of so many yards with books, at so much per volume, and Mr. Klostermann, the "Libraire de la Cour Imperiale," died worth a plum, having sold many thousand yards of books (among which I understood there were several hundred copies of Voltaire), at from 50 to 100 roubles a yard, "according to the binding."

A. ASHER. Berlin. Dec. 1849.

Thistle of Scotland.—R.L. will find the thistle first introduced on coins during the reign of James V., although the motto "Nemo me impune lacessit" was not adopted until two reigns later. —See Lindsay's Coinage of Scotland, Longman, 1845.

B.N.

Miry-Land Town. In the Athenaeum, in an article on the tradition respecting Sir Hugh of Lincoln, the Bishop of Dromore's version of the affair is thus given:—

In explanation of part of this stanza, Dr. Percy is stated to have considered "Mirry-land toune" to be "probably a corruption of Milan (called by the Dutch Meylandt) town," and that the Pa' was "evidently the River Po, though the Adige, not the Po, runs through Milan;" and it is observed that it could not have occasioned Dr. Jamieson much trouble to conjecture as he did that "Mirry-land toune" was a corruption of "Merry Lincolne," and that, in fact, in 1783, Pinkerton commenced his version of the ballad thus—

and it is added, very truly, that with all his haste and petulance, Pinkerton's critical acumen was far from inconsiderable. Now, there appears to me to have been a very simple solution of the above words, so simple that perhaps it was beneath the critical acumen of the said commentators. My note on the subject is, that Mirry-land toune means nothing more than Miry-, Muddy-land Town, a designation that its situation certainly entitles it to; and Pa' is certainly not the Po, but an abbreviated form of Pall, i.e. a place to play Ba' or ball in, of which we have a well-known instance in Pall Mall.

Since writing the above, I recollect that Romsey, in Hampshire, has been designated