Statistics.

—Is there any work published, on which reliance may be placed, which would give me the numbers, or supposed numbers, of persons professing the Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant, Episcopal, and other varieties of religious worship? The number of professing members of the Greek Church is given in various works, but I have never seen any complete list of the numbers professing other religions.

Q. E. D.

274. Cross-legged Effigies.

—What is the date of the latest cross-legged effigy known, and is the person commemorated known to have been connected with the Crusades? Is there any cross-legged memorial effigy with the hands in the attitude of drawing the sword of so late a date as the fourteenth century?

Dugdale and others say that persons pledged to join a crusade were marked with the cross. How was this ceremony performed?

W. H. K.

275. Verses accidentally occur in Classical Prose often.

—Has a collection of these ever been made? (I have a "Note" on the subject, but do not send it, feeling sure I must have been anticipated.)

A. A. D.

276. Count Maurice Tanner de Lacy.

—From what family connexion did "Count Maurice Tanner de Lacy," general in the Austrian service, and who died in 1819, take the name of "Tanner?" What relative was General M. de Lacy to Joseph Francis Maurice Count de Lacy, field marshal under Joseph II., and who distinguished himself so highly during the Seven Years' War; also who was mother of the latter?

Ποθέω.

277. The Sinaitic Inscriptions.

—Your correspondent E. H. D. D. (Vol. iv., p. 332.) says that the Sinaitic inscriptions have been already deciphered. May I ask, by whom?

T. D.

278. Portrait of Dr. Bray.

—Is any authentic portrait in existence of Dr. Bray, to whom the venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel owes its origin?

C.

279. Peter Plancius' Map of the World.

—In M. Blundevill his Exercises, containing Eight Treatises, 6th edition, 4to., 1622, one of the eight is described thus:

Item. A plaine and full description of Peter Plancius his universall Mappe lately set forth in the yeare of our Lord 1592, containing more places newly found, as well in the East and West Indies, as also towards the North Pole, which no other Mappe heretofore hath."

Where is this Peter Plancius' map to be found?

J. O. M.

280. Derivation of Theodolite.

—Can any of your correspondents give the derivation of theodolite? I fear that θεάομαι δολος might be considered a libel.

J. S. WOOD.

281. Lycian Inscriptions.

—I should be glad to hear what attempts have been made, and with what success, to decipher the inscriptions upon the Lycian monuments in the British Museum. Col. Mure, in his History of Grecian Literature, vol. i. p. 84., speaks of them as at present unintelligible. The character, he says, is a variety of the Græco-Phœnician. I find several, if not the greater part, of the letters in Gesenius's Monumenta Phœnicia, especially Tab. 11. and 12. What is the language in which they are written? And if an aboriginal tongue, over what portion of Asia did the stock to which it belongs extend in the historical period, and what is that stock? Is it to that class of dialects that the language of the Gods, as Homer distinguishes a certain tongue from the language of men, belongs: which called the "night-jar" χαλκίς, named by men κύμινδις (Il. 14. 291.); and "the giant" Βριάρεως, instead of Αἰγαίων (Il. 1. 403.); and "the Xanthus, Ξάνθος, instead of Σκάμανδρος; and, which is more remarkable still, "the hillock" on the plain of Troy, the σῆμα πολυσκάρθμοιο Μυρίνης, while men named it Βατίεια (Il. 2. 813.) I have hitherto been accustomed to consider these names which the gods use to be the old Pelasgian names, assured as I feel that the Pelasgi occupied the north-west corner of Asia Minor before the Greeks (Hellenes) took Troy, which event I have looked upon as one of many in which the energies and [ ... ] of the young and vigorous Hellenic family were successfully exerted against their contemporaries of the other less powerful descendants of the old Pelasgic settlers in that part of the world. But I shall be thankful for the information which others wiser than I can give, even if it be but a theory: accompanied with the facts on which it is based, it will be worth attention.

THEOPHYLACT.

282. Maltese Dialect.

—Is it more reasonable to assign the Arabic character of the Maltese dialect to the fact of its early occupation by the Hebrew-speaking Phœnicians, or to the subsequent Saracen occupation? or may its difference from Hebrew and from Arabic be explained by the circumstances of its history, as having been twice, at two very different periods, occupied by invaders belonging to two branches of the same stock? Bochart, Canaan, i. 26., says that the name "Melete" is Hebrew, meaning refugium; and Diodorus Siculus, v. cap. 12., uses the term καταφυγή concerning it so pointedly, that it would almost seem as though he knew that to be the reason why the Phœnicians gave it its name.

THEOPHYLACT.

283. Hobbes's "Leviathan" (Vol. iv., p. 314.).

—You have inserted my inquiry respecting the frontispiece to Hobbes's Leviathan; I should also be glad to know the interpretation put by any of your readers on the various other symbols in that plate. They are, on one side of the title, a castle, a crown, a cannon, a pile of arms, and a field of battle, in compartments one below another; and on the other side, a church, a mitre, a thunderbolt, a collection of implements marked syllogism, dilemma, &c., and a tribunal.

I have my own view of the meaning of each part of this, which is at your service when required.

W. W.

Cambridge.

284. Wigtoun Peerage.

—Can any of your legal correspondents inform me whether there exist any reports of the addresses of the Lord Advocate for Scotland, the king's Attorney-General, or the Lord Chancellor, on the hearing or decision of this case in the year 1782?

The Lord Chancellor was Lord Thurlow; the Lord Advocate, Sir Henry Dundas; the Attorney-General, Mr. Wallace.

S. E. G.

285. Sale by Candle.

—Forty or fifty years ago goods were advertised for public sale "by the candle." Can any of your readers inform me of the origin of this?

I may remark that it was the custom then at some sales to have candles marked with red circles;