NOTES NOTES AND QUERIES The history of books and periodicals of a similar character ought to be the object of interest to the readers of this work. The number of works in which answers have been given to proposed questions is not small. Not to mention the Spectator and its imitators, nor the class of almanacs which give riddles and problems, nor mathematical periodicals of a more extensive... more...

CONSONANTS Of the consonants, b, d, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, ng, p, sh, t, v, z, always have their common English sounds, when used to transliterate foreign words. The letter c is not used by itself in re-writing for pronunciation, s or k being used instead. The only consonantal symbols, therefore, that require explanation are the following:— ch is always as in rich. d, nearly as th in this = Sp. d... more...

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS. BATHOS and pathos are closely allied in sound as well as in sense. Mr. FECHTER evidently regards them as completely identical; and in his acting, as in his pronunciation, uniformly prefers the former to the latter. He has recently exemplified this by his personation of CLAUDE MELNOTTE, in that most tawdry specimen of the cotton-velvet drama, the LADY OF LYONS. This melancholy event... more...

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY. I suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald" of August 13th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the announcement, "NOLAN. DIED, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11' S., Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May: Philip Nolan." I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission-House in Mackinac,... more...

ROBERT'S AMERICAN ACQUAINTANCE. My akwaintance among eminent selebraties seems to be rapidly encreasing. Within what Amlet calls a week, a little week, after my larst intervue with the emenent young Swell as amost lost his art to the pretty Bridesmade, I have been onored with the most cordial notice of a werry emenent Amerrycane, who cums to Lundon wunce ewery year, and makes a good long stay, and... more...

BALKS IN A BRUSH. FLORA, having no relations in the world that she knew of, had, ever since her seventh new bonnet, known no other home than Macassar Female College, in the Alms-House, and regarded Miss CAROWTHERS as her mother-in-lore. Her memory of her own mother was of a lady-like person who had swiftly waisted away in the effort to be always taken for her own daughter, and was, one day, brought... more...

THE FUTURE OF CHINA. The late reconquest by China of some of her former possessions in Central Asia, and the firm tone in which she is urging her demands upon Russia, in respect of the Kuldja territory, are giving her a prominence as a factor in Asiatic politics which she can scarcely be said to have claimed before. These signs of tenacity of purpose, if not of actual vitality, acquire an additional... more...

A MANUAL OF DENOUEMENTS. “In the king’s name, Let fall your swords and daggers.”—CRITIC. A melo-drama is a theatrical dose in two or three acts, according to the strength of the constitution of the audience. Its component parts are a villain, a lover, a heroine, a comic character, and an executioner. These having simmered and macerated through all manner of events, are strained off together... more...

THE MUD LARKS. THE French are a great people; the more I see of them the more I admire them, and I have been seeing a lot of them lately. I seem to have spent the last week eating six-course dinners in cellars with grizzled sky-blue colonels, endeavouring to reply to their charming compliments in a mixture of Gaelic and CORNELIUS NEPOS. I myself had no intention of babbling these jargons; it is the... more...

BANKS, GEORGE LINNAEUS (1821-1881), British miscellaneous writer, was born at Birmingham on the 2nd of March 1821. After a brief experience in a variety of trades, he became at the age of seventeen a contributor to various newspapers, and subsequently a playwright, being the author of two plays, a couple of burlesques and several lyrics. Between 1848 and 1864 he edited in succession a variety of... more...