In reference to an inquiry by R. E. in our last Magazine, Z, who writes from Edinburgh, gives us the following explanation: The custom of TAKING

OFF THE HAT ON MEETING A FUNERAL

is derived from Roman Catholic times, and it still exists in Roman Catholic countries. A cross is always carried at funerals, and it is to it that the salutation is made. I had at one time a belief that it was a mark of respect to the grief of the relatives and friends, and as such it may be regarded in Protestant countries, but the origin of the custom is certainly as above stated."

CHERUBINO sends us the following three queries, which he hopes will meet attention from some of our learned correspondents:

1. What is the latest observed example of the use of THE NIMBUS in medieval art?

2. What artists have delineated the interview between the Saviour and Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection; a subject commonly known in art by the name of NOLI ME TANGERE? A reference to pictures, or other works of art, in which this subject is treated, will be much esteemed.

3. What German medallist, or worker in gold and silver, is indicated by a мoNOGRAM Composed of the letters H. R. with the appended date of 1536 ?

C. E. inquires, Can any of our Correspondents throw light upon the origin of the word "PLUM" used to signify a sum of 100,000/.? The inquirer finds it used in the Guardian and by Pope and Young, but not earlier.

Our valued friend J. R., of CORK, remarks upon the statement in our last Magazine (p. 15), that VINCENT DE PAUL succoured the English Catholics in the time of the Commonwealth; that he not only harboured and by his "contributions and influence extensively aided the Roman Catholic refugees from Great Britain; but, urged by a still deeper interest in the unfortunate Irish of the same communion, he earnestly besought the all-powerful Cardinal Richelieu, in 1641, to assist them, just then rising in insurrection against the Parliament, while prepared to combat for the King, with men and money. To facilitate his purpose, he offered 300,000 crowns, towards the cost of the expedition. But the Cardinal-minister, whose succour, in every form, to the Protestants of the North, against

Catholic Austria, had never been refused, as Vincent forcibly represented to him, declined the recommended interference, and reasoned with the advocate of the Irish Catholics on its impropriety-a condescension to which the imperious minister seldom yielded. He thus, however, tried to sooth the disappointed hopes of the respected applicant." Our Correspondent adds, in reference to what is stated at page 15, respecting Louis XIII. having required Vincent de Paul's attendance on his death-bed, that Vincent's address to the royal patient may be worth recording: "Sire, celui qui craint Dieu, s'en trouvera bien dans les derniers moments: Timenti Dominum, bene erit in extremis;" to which the King, completing the biblical line, promptly replied, " Et in die defunctionis suæ benedicetur." The book whence these words are taken is Ecclesiasticus, i. 13.

An advertisement in our present Magazine exhibits some part of the progress made by the Committee for the restoration of Chaucer's tomb. We heartily recommend the subject to our readers all over the kingdom, and trust that the required sum will be raised without delay. A careful inspection of the monument has led to a conclusion which gives the subject a double interest. The tomb turns out to be that originally erected to Chaucer; the canopy only being an addition of Nicholas Brigham in the reign of Mary. All who design to contribute to the preservation of this interesting relic should do so at once, that the Committee may have it in their power to stop the further progress of dilapidation.

As the workmen employed by the contractor under the Commissions of Sewers were excavating in the centre of Nicholas Lane. on the 29th of June, at the depth of about 11 feet, they discovered a large Islab with the following Roman inscription in well-cut letters, five or six inches in length.

MR. URBAN,

MR. COLLIER observes that the principal question which arises with regard to the play of Henry VIII. is when it was written. By whom it was written has not yet been made a question, so far as I know; at least not in print. And yet several of our most considerable critics have incidentally betrayed a consciousness that there is something peculiar either in the execution, or the structure, or the general design of it, which should naturally suggest a doubt on this point. Dr. Johnson observes that the genius of Shakspere comes in and goes out with Katharine, and that the rest of the play might be easily conceived and easily written a fact, if it be a fact, so remarkable as to call for explanation. Coleridge, in one of his attempts to classify Shakspere's plays (1802), distinguished Henry VIII. as gelegenheitsgedicht; in another (1819) as sort of historical masque or shewplay;" thereby betraying a consciousness that there was something singular and exceptional about it. Ulrici, who has applied himself with a German ingenuity to discover in each of Shakspere's plays a profound moral purpose, is obliged to confess that he can make nothing of Henry VIII., and is driven to suppose that what we have was meant only for a first part, to be followed by a second in which the odds would have been made even. Mr. Knight, whose faith is proof against such doubts, does indeed treat Henry VIII. as the perfect crown and consummation of the series of historical plays, and succeeds in tracing through the first four acts a consistent and sufficient moral; but when he comes to

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the fifth, which should crown all, he is obliged to put us off with a reference to the historians; admitting that the catastrophe which history had provided as the crowning moral of the whole is not exhibited in the play, "but who (he asks) can forget it?"-an apology for the gravest of all defects which seems to me quite inadmissible. A peculiarity of another kind has also been detected, I forget by whom, namely the unusual number of lines with a redundant syllable at the end, of which it is said there are twice as many in this as in any other play of Shakspere's;—a circumstance well worthy of consideration, for so broad a difference was not likely to be accidental; and one which is the more remarkable when viewed in connexion with another peculiarity of style pointed out by Mr. Knight, viz. the number of passages in which the lines are so run into each other that it is impossible to separate them in reading by the slightest pause at the end of each. Now the passage which he selects in illustration is one in which the proportion of lines with the redundant syllable is unusually small; and therefore it would appear that this play is remarkable for the prevalence of two peculiarities of different kinds, which are in some degree irreconcileable with each other.

I shall have something further to say on these points presently. I mention them here only to show that critical observers have been long conscious of certain singularities in this play which require to be accounted for. And, leaving the critics, I might probably appeal to the individual consciousness of each reader, and ask him

whether he has not always felt that, in spite of some great scenes which have made actors and actresses famous, and many beautiful speeches which adorn our books of extracts (and which, by the way, lose little or nothing by separation from their context, a most rare thing in Shakspere), the effect of this play as a whole is weak and disappointing. The truth is that the interest, instead of rising towards the end, falls away utterly, and leaves us in the last act among persons whom we scarcely know, and events for which we do not care. The strongest sympathies which have been awakened in us run opposite to the course of the action. Our sympathy is for the grief and goodness of Queen Katharine, while the course of the action requires us to entertain as a theme of joy and compensatory satisfaction the coronation of Anne Bullen and the birth of her daughter; which are in fact a part of Katharine's injury, and amount to little less than the ultimate triumph of wrong. For throughout the play the king's cause is not only felt by us, but represented to us, as a bad one. We hear, indeed, of conscientious scruples as to the legality of his first marriage; but we are not made, nor indeed asked, to believe that they are sincere, or to recognise in his new marriage either the hand of Providence, or the consummation of any worthy object, or the victory of any of those more common frailties of humanity with which we can sympathise. The mere caprice of passion drives the king into the commission of what seems a great iniquity; our compassion for the victim of it is elaborately excited; no attempt is made to awaken any counter-sympathy for him yet his passion has its way, and is crowned with all felicity, present and to come. The effect is much like that which would have been produced by the Winter's Tale if Hermione had died in the fourth act in consequence of the jealous tyranny of Leontes, and the play had ended with the coronation of a new queen and the christening of a new heir, no period of remorse intervening. It is as if Nathan's rebuke to David had ended, not with the doom of death to the child just born, but with a prophetic promise of the felicities of Solomon.

This main defect is sufficient of

itself to mar the effect of the play as a whole. But there is another, which though less vital is not less unaccountable. The greater part of the fifth act, in which the interest ought to be gathering to a head, is occupied with matters in which we have not been prepared to take any interest by what went before, and on which no interest is reflected by what comes after. The scenes in the gallery and councilchamber, though full of life and vigour, and, in point of execution, not unworthy of Shakspere, are utterly irrelevant to the business of the play; for what have we to do with the quarrel between Gardiner and Cranmer? Nothing in the play is explained by it, nothing depends upon it. It is used only (so far as the argument is concerned) as a preface for introducing Cranmer as godfather to Queen Elizabeth, which might have been done as a matter of course without any preface at all. The scenes themselves are indeed both picturesque and characteristic and historical, and might probably have been introduced with excellent effect into a dramatised life of Henry VIII. But historically they do not belong to the place where they are introduced here, and poetically they have in this place no value, but the reverse.

With the fate of Wolsey, again, in whom our second interest centres, the business of this last act does not connect itself any more than with that of Queen Katharine. The fate of Wolsey would have made a noble subject for a tragedy in itself, and might very well have been combined with the tragedy of Katharine; but, as an introduction to the festive solemnity with which the play concludes, the one seems to me as inappropriate as the other.

Nor can the existence of these defects be accounted for by any inherent difficulty in the subject. It cannot be said that they were in any way forced upon the dramatist by the facts of the story. The incidents of the reign of Henry VIII. could not, it is true, like those of an ancient tradition or an Italian novel, be altered at pleasure to suit the purposes of the artist; but they admitted of many different combinations, by which the effect of the play might have been modified to almost