Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 9.djvu/196

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [us. ix.MA*.7,


AMERICAN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HIS- TORY. The Commencement Oration of the Michigan University in 1892 was delivered by Mr. Justin Winsor, who dealt with the Pageant of Saint Lusson in the year 1671. Where can I find the account of this pageant, written by the Canadian Jesuit Dreuillette, one of the principal actors therein ? Ac- cording to Mr. Winsor, there was at least one interval in the Puritan persecution of Catholics in New England, for he tells us that, at a town near the site of the modern Augusta, a merchant opened his house to the priest and gave him the key of a room where he could, undisturbed, arrange his holy vessels and say his masses further, that Governor Bradford provided a dinner on a certain Friday when, out of respect to his guest's religion, the table was set with fish alone. M. N.

SERGEANT DUNCAN ROBERTSON'S * JOUR- NAL.' In 1842 there appeared at Perth

" The Journal of Sergeant DFuncan] Robertson, late 92d Foot : comprising the different campaigns between the years 1797 and 1818 in Egypt, Walcheren, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, France, and Belgium" (8vo, pp vii, 164; text con- tains 52,400 words).

Edited (indifferently), I believe, by the minister of Dunkeld, Robertson's native town, this book was largely used by Col. Greenhill Gardyne in his fine book ' The Life of a Regiment.' Parts of Robertson's

  • Journal ' were reprinted by Mr. MacKenzie

MacBride in ' With Napoleon at Waterloo,' 1911. There are some differences between the ' Journal ' of 1842 and this partial reprint which suggest that Mr. MacBride used a different original, though, curiously enough, the paragraphs which he omits are the very ones pencilled out in Col. Greenhill Gardyne's copy, as if Mr. MacBride printed from some transcript of the latter, which has been in the Colonel's possession for the last sixty years. Can any reader explain this ? J. M. BULLOCH.

123, Pall Mall.

Is " MONGOLIAN " " SOGDIAN " OR " TOK- HARISH " ? In A.D. 786 a Buddhist monk from Cashmere joined with a Christian named Adam of Persia in translating a Buddhist scripture from a Mongolian text ('I-Tsing,' by Prof. Takakusu, Oxford, 1888, p. 224). When the Emperor of China found it out he stopped the work, on the ground that it created confusion between the Indian Buddha and the Syrian Messiah. I-Tsing himself (a Chinese pilgrim of the seventh century) speaks of " Turkish and


Mongolian countries, such as Tukhara and Suli" (op. cit., p. 49). Now Tukhara was the country of the Tochari, whom Edward Meyer identifies with the Yueh-chi. They spoke a recently recovered language called Tokharish, into which the Buddhist scrip- tures had been translated as early as B.C. 2. Was I-Tsiiig's " Mongolian " this language or the neighbouring Sogdian, into which the Sutras were also translated in early times ?

ALBERT J. EDMUNDS. Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

GLADSTONE'S INVOLVED SENTENCES. The late Justin McCarthy in ' A Short History of our Own Times,' chap, x., referring to Gladstone as an orator, remarks :

" Sometimes he involved his sentence in paren- thesis within parenthesis until the ordinary listener began to think extrication an impossibility; but the orator never failed to unravel all the entangle- ments and to bring the passage out to a clear and legitimate conclusion."

Lord Morley in his ' Life of Gladstone,' book vii. chap, vi., referring to the same subject, says :

" Nor at any point in the labyrinthine evolution of his longest sentence," &c.

And again :

" So he bore his hearers through long chains of strenuous periods."

In ' W. Allingham, a Diary ' (1907), p. 336, we read :

" We spoke of Gladstone's oratory : I said I thought Brougham's (whom I heard two or three times) the most like it in practised verbosity, and the long sentences out of which the speaker wound himself at last without a break."

Can any reader kindly inform me whether this criticism of Gladstone was general or confined to a certain period of his life ? Was it in the House of Commons or on the plat- form that this mode of speaking was most conspicuously adopted ? The date of any speeches containing the most involved sentences would oblige. I shall be glad to know of anything that has been written on Gladstone simply as an orator.

F. C. W T HITE.

71, Newfoundland Road, Cardiff.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION WANTED. I should be much obliged for any informa- tion about the following Cottons, who were educated at Westminster School: (1) Alex- ander, admitted 1777 ; (2) Edward, ad- mitted 1778 ; (3) Richard, admitted 1734, aged 13; (4) Robert, admitted 1729, aged 13 ; (5) Robert, admitted 1750, aged 9 ; and (6) Thomas, admitted 1771.

G. F. R. B.