MISCELLANEOUS AND NOTES QUERIES A MONTHLY MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, FOLK-LORE, MATHEMATICS, 50,00 GARY OF CON "Many people know many things, no one everything." —Edward Coke. 408984 -0-п----<> Notes and Queries. 1882-1892.. Volumes I and II, July, 1882, to December, 1885, contain pp. 672 Volumes III and IV, for 1886 and 1887, 446 PREFACE. VOLUMES IX AND X (1892). We have again arrived at the close of another year, and also to the close of the tenth volume of NOTES AND QUERIES. While taking a retrospective glance over the volumes, we are reminded of the words of William Ellery Channing in his address on SELF-CULTURE an introductory to the Franklin Lectures, Boston, 1838. He says: 66 "God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling, if the sacred writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for mant of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society, in the place where I live." Disraeli (Earl of Beconsfield) says that nine-tenths of existing books are nonsense, and the clever books are the refutation of that nonsense. These adverse views as to the value of books only illustrate many a modern mind. Even it is said that when the Alexandrian library was ordered to be burned, that the Calif Cmar said the Koran was the sole book needed for the world. The great number of books referred to and quoted in ten volumes of this periodical are evidence of the large held the contents cover. We intend during the coming year to publish aň ̊ index to the entire ten volumes (July, 1882, to December, 1892), which will constitute the first series. We are aware that there are some discrepencies in statements, and other minor errors. Authorities differ in chronology, in translation, in etymology, etc., but the conflit serves to incite us to investigate, |