io' s. v. APE.L 7, 1906.J NOTES AND QUERIES.
267
been cut, in the best sense of that nautical
phrase ; and the last detachment of an army
of occupation has left its shores.
RICHARD EDGCUMBE. Edgbarrow, Crowthorne.
MLLE. G. M. MERLETTE. I feared to make my note on Elizabeth Barrett Browning (ante, pp. 204, 224) too long, or should have written more about Mile. Germaine Marie Merlette ; but it should be recorded that this gifted lady did not live long after writing what The At/ienceum pronounced would "long continue to be by far the fullest and most adequate biography" of Mrs. Browning. Mile. Merlette died on the 5th of October, 1905 ; and a short obituary notice in The Athenaeum of the 21st of the same month states that her " enthusiasm for her subject took her to England and Italy in search of material." This was supplied to her by Mr. Barrett Browning and other friends. The biography gained for her* the distinction of the Doctorate of the University of Paris, to which it was presented as a thesis.
JOHN C. FRANCIS.
WE must request correspondents desiring in-
formation on family matters of only private interest
to affix their names and addresses to their queries,
in order that answers may be sent to them direct.
" PLACE." We should like to get as much
information as possible about the use of this
word in the topographical nomenclature of
cities, towns, and villages, as in Bury Place,
Ely Place, Langham Place, Portland Place.
When did names of this type begin in Great
Britain ? What early examples can be given ?
When, for example, was Ely Place named?
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
we find place frequently used in reference to
foreign cities, rendering Fr. place, Sp. jjla.ici,
It. piazza. Ger. platz^ Du. plaats, &c. ; and
always, of course, in its proper sense of the
square, public place, market place, or place
d'armes of the town, or of a regularly built
piazza, as in Rome or Florence. I presume
that it was in this sense of "open square" or
the like that the name was first introduced
(perhaps as a grandiose or stylish name) into
London and English towns, where it rapidly
degenerated into a denomination for any area,
group, or row of houses, not a street. In
the nineteenth century many streets had
"places" in them, the name having been
given by builders to a small row of houses,
standing by themselves on a suburban road,
or perhaps merely distinguished from others
by being the property of one landlord or
builder. And before the road in question
had become a street, and could be numbered
continuously, it was necessary to have some
means of distinguishing and localizing the
numerous groups or rows of houses which it
contained ; for which purpose '* place," as
the common English word for a point or part
of space, a locus, lieu, or orf, was very handy.
It would be extremly difficult now to say
what a "place" is in English town nomen-
clature, unless, perhaps, by a negative state-
ment that what is so designated is usually
not a street or road, but may be almost
anything else, from a well-built aristocratic
square to a small nondescript area off a back
street, or an isolated group of three houses
by a suburban wayside. I should be glad of
suggestions for a definition.
As to earlier usage, we find T. Washington, in translating Nicolay's * Voyages,' writing, in 1585, of an Oriental city, u The places and streets are well ordeined ; A. Lovell, in 1687, writing, ** There are in it many lovely Piazza's or Places, as that which is before the Palace of his Eminence"; and even Macaulay, in 1848, referring to the Piazza Navona at Rome as " the stately Place of Navona." In 1796 J. Owen, in his 'Travels into Europe,' ii. 458, writes of a German city :
- ' There are some squares, as we improperly call
them in England, but which the Germans, as well as the French and Italians, more properly denomi- nate Place*. The word in the German is Platz, corresponding to the French Place and the Italian Piazza."
This would tend to show that, so late as. 1796, "Place" was at least not common in English street nomenclature. So far as I am acquainted with provincial towns, "Place" does not belong at all to the old nomenclature, but entirely to the era of modern building. In Hawick I think the first "place" dates to about 1830. But it is very desirable to have actual dates for the denomination, not only from London and Bath, but from towns and villages all over the British Isles. Who can produce the earliest "Place"? J. A. H. MURRAY.
"PLACE," " PLACE - MAKING," IN BELL- RINGING. Will any one be so good as to send direct to Dr. Murray, Oxford, an explanation of the technical use of these words in bell- ringing, with dated quotations from the seventeenth century to the twentieth?
J. T. F.
MACAULAY ON " ARABELLA " SEDLEY. In every edition of Macaulay's essays that I have the opportunity of consulting there
