the year 1844 died James Horrocks, a small farmer, who lived at Harwood, a short distance from Bolton, in Lancashire, having completed his hundredth year. This circumstance, however, was not so remarkable as that of his own birth, his father, William Horrocks, having been born in 1657, one year before the death of Cromwell, and having married in 1741, at the advanced age of eight-four, a second wife, a young and buxom woman of twenty-six, by whom he had one child, the above James Horrocks, born March 14, 1744, and baptized at Bradshaw Chapel, near Bolton.

It is believed that the first wife of William Horrocks had been employed in the well-known family of the Chethams, at Castleton Hall, near Rochdale (a branch of that of Humphrey Chetham), by whom they were both much respected; and soon after the second marriage, he and his youthful wife were sent for to Castleton Hall by the Chethams, by whom they were treated with much kindness; and the remarkable disparity of years in their marriage having no doubt created great interest, a painter was employed to take their portraits, which are still in existence, with the ages of the parties at the time, and the dates, when taken, painted upon them.

I paid the son, James Horrocks, more than one visit, and on the last occasion, in company with James Crossley, Esq., of Manchester, the Reverend Canon Parkinson, Principal of St. Bees' College, and one or two other gentlemen, I took my son with me. It happened to be the very day on which he completed his hundredth year, and we found him full of cheerfulness and content, expecting several of his descendants to spend the day with him. I possess a portrait in crayons of this venerable patriarch, taken on that day by a very clever artist, who accompanied us on our visit, and which is an extremely faithful likeness of the original. Should it please Providence to spare my son to attain to his seventieth year, he also will be enabled, in the year 1900, to say that he has seen a man whose father lived in the time of Oliver Cromwell; thus connecting events, with the intervention of one life only, comprehending a period of very nearly two centuries and a half.

P.S. A very interesting narrative of all the facts of this case was published in the Manchester Guardian a few years ago, comprising many curious particulars not noticed by myself, a copy of which I shall be glad to send you, if you think it worthy of insertion in "NOTES AND QUERIES".

[We accept with thanks the offer of our valued correspondent.]

DR. YOUNG'S NARCISSA.

A pamphlet was recently published at Lyons and Paris, by a Monsieur de Terrebasse, intending to prove that the daughter-in-law of Dr. Young, so pathetically lamented by him in the Night Thoughts under the poetical name of "Narcissa," was not clandestinely buried at Montpellier; that Dr. Young did not steal a grave for her from the Roman Catholics of that city; and that consequently the celebrated and touching episode in Night III. is purely imaginary. This opinion of M. de Terrebasse, first given to the world by him in 1832, and now repeated, has been controverted by the writer of an article in the Gazette Médicale of Montpellier. The tomb, it is said, of Elisabeth Lee, Dr. Young's daughter-in-law, was discovered a few years since at Lyons; and M. de Terrebasse endeavours to prove, from that circumstance, and from a comparison of facts and dates, that this Elisabeth Lee was the "Narcissa" of the poet. Not having seen M. de Terrebasse's pamphlet, and being indebted to the Journal des Savants for this brief account of it, it seems difficult to discover from it how M. de Terrebasse can pretend so summarily to invalidate the solemn and touching assertions of the poet, which assuredly are anything but flights of fancy.

In the notes to an edition of the Night Thoughts, printed in 1798, by C. Whittingham, for T. Heptinstall—

"It appears," it is stated, "by the extract of a letter just printed, that in order to obtain a grave, the Doctor bribed the under gardener, who dug the grave, and let him in by a private door, bearing his beloved daughter, wrapped up in a sheet, upon his shoulder. When he had laid her in this hole he sat down, and, as the man expressed it, 'rained tears.' It appears also, that some time previous to this event, expecting the catastrophe, he had been seen walking solitarily backward in this garden, as if to find the most solitary spot for his purpose."—See Evang. Mag., Nov. 1797.

I do not know what authority this letter quoted from the Evang. Mag. may possess.

Minor Notes.

Curious Epitaph.—The following lines are on a stone in Killyleagh churchyard. I have a faint recollection of seeing a similarly constructed epitaph in Harris's History of the County of Down, which was perhaps composed by the same person. Is any of your readers acquainted with any English inscription in the same style?

It will easily be seen that the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth words are to be read in connexion, as are those that follow these, and those next in succession.

The person on whose tomb the lines occur was the Rev. William Richardson, who died in 1670, having been minister of Killyleagh for twenty-one years. By the way, is not mysta a strange designation for a Presbyterian minister? I should think it would be now considered as objectionable as sacerdos.

The Curse of Scotland (Vol. i., pp. 61. 90.; Vol. iii., p. 22.).—

"The queen of clubs is called in Northamptonshire Queen Bess, perhaps, because that queen, history says, was of a swarthy complexion; the four of spades, Ned Stokes, but why I know not; the nine of diamonds, the curse of Scotland, because every ninth monarch of that nation was a bad king to his subjects. I have been told by old people, that this card was so called long before the Rebellion in 1745, and therefore it could not arise from the circumstance of the Duke of Cumberland's sending orders, accidentally written upon the card, the night before the battle of Culloden, for General Campbell to give no quarter."

The above extract from a communication to the Gentleman's Magazine for 1791, p. 141., is quoted in Mr. Singer's Researches into the History of Playing Cards, p. 271.; but the reason assigned by the writer does not