sermon, and I now only add, "here endeth the first lesson" from

ECCLESIASTES.

["J.E.," "D.D.," and other correspondents, have also replied
to this Query by references to Eccl. ix. 4.]

_Curious Monumental Brass_ (No. 16. p. 247.)--If "RAHERE" will turn to
Mr. Boutell's _Monumental Brasses and Slabs_, p. 148., he will there
find a description as well as an engraving of what, from his account,
I doubt not he will discover to be the identical fragment to which he
refers. A foot legend, and what remains of a border inscription, is
added to it. In the above work, pp. 147 to 155, and in the Oxford
Architectural Society's _Manual for the Study of Brasses_, p. 15.,
"RAHERE" will find an account and references to numerous examples of
palimpsest brasses, to which class the one in question belongs.

I presume that "RAHERE" is a young brass-rubber, or the fact of a
plate being engraved on both sides would have presented no difficulty
to him.

ARUN.

[We have received several other replies to this Query,
referring to Mr. Boutell's _Monumental Brasses_: one from
"W."; another from "A CORNISHMAN," who says,--

"The brass in question, when I saw it last, had been
removed from the Rectory and placed in the tomb of Abbot
Wheathampstead, in company with the famous one of Thomas
Delamere, another Abbot of St. Albans."

Another from "E.V.," who states,--

"Other examples are found at St. Margaret's, Rochester (where
the cause of the second engraving is found to be an error in
costume in the first), St. Martins at Plain, Norwich, Hedgerly
Church, Bucks, and Burwell Church, Cambridgeshire. Of this
last, an engraving and description, by Mr. A.W. Franks,
is given in the fourteenth part of the Publications of the
Cambridge Antiquarian Society."

One from "WILLIAM SPARROW SIMPSON," who says,--

"It is also described in the Oxford Architectural Society's
_Manual of Mon. Brasses_, No. 6. pp. 6, 7. other examples of
which occur at Rochester, Kent, and at Cobham, Surrey. A small
plate of brass, in the possession of a friend, has on one side
a group of children, and on the reverse the uplifted hands of
an earlier figure."

And lastly, one from "A.P.H." (to which we cannot do ample
justice, as we do not keep an engraver), from which we extract
the following passages:--

"A friend of mine has a shield in his possession,