, that Dover-Court Church in Essex once possessed a
miraculous cross which spoke, thus noticed in the _Collier of Croydon_:

"And how the rood of _Dovercot_ did speak,
Confirming his opinions to be true."

So that it is possible, as Nares suggests, that this church was the
scene of confusion alluded to in the proverb: "Dover Court, all
speakers and no hearers." Fox, in his _Martyrology_, vol. ii. p. 302.,
states, that "a rumour was spread that no man could shut the door,
which therefore stood open night and day; and that the resort of people
to it was much and very great."]

_Porter._--In what book is the word _porter_, meaning the malt liquor so
called, first found? I have an impression that the earliest use of it that
I have seen is in Nicholas Amherst's _Terrae Filius_, about 1726.

H. T. RILEY.

[We doubt whether an earlier use of this word, as descriptive of a malt
liquor, will be found than the one noticed by our correspondent; for it
was only about 1722 that Harwood, a London brewer, commenced brewing
this liquor, which he called "entire," or "entire butt," implying that
it was drawn from one cask or butt. It subsequently obtained the name
of _porter_, from its consumption by porters and labourers.]

_Dr. Whitaker's Ingenious Earl._--

"To our equal surprise and vexation at times, we find the ancients
possessed of degrees of physical knowledge with which we were mostly or
entirely unacquainted ourselves. I need not appeal in proof of this to
that extraordinary operation of chemistry, by which Moses reduced the
golden calf to powder, and then give it mingled with water as a drink
to the Israelites; an operation the most difficult in all the processes
of chemistry, and concerning which it is a sufficient honour for the
moderns to say, that they have once or twice practised it. I need not
appeal to the mummies of Egypt, in which the art of embalming bodies is
so eminently displayed, that all attempts at imitation have only showed
the infinite superiority of the original to the copy. I need not appeal
to the gilding upon those mummies so fresh in its lustre; to the
stained silk of them, so vivid in its colours after a lapse of 3000
years; to the ductility and malleability of glass, discovered by an
artist of Rome in the days of Tiberius, but instantly lost by the
immediate murder of the