while you
Admire what other folks eschew.

RUFUS.

* * * * *

_Junius_.--Nobody can read, without being struck with the propriety
of it, that beautiful passage in the 8th letter--"Examine your own
breast, Sir William, &c. &c. &c." A parallel passage may however be
found in _Bevill Higgons's Short View of English History_ (temp. Hen.
VI.), a work written before 1700, and not published till thirty-four
years afterwards:--

"So weak and fallible is that admired maxim, 'Factum valet,
quot fieri non debuit,' an excuse first invented to palliate
the unfledged villainy of some men, _who are ashamed to be
knaves, yet have not the courage to be honest_."

I have not quoted the whole of the passage from _Junius_, as I
consider it to be in almost every body's hands. I am collecting some
curious, and I hope valuable, information about that work.

B.G.

_Arabic Numerals_.--Your correspondent T.S.D.'s account of a supposed
date upon the Church of St. Brelade, Jersey, brings to my mind a
circumstance that once occurred to myself, which may, perhaps, be
amusing to date-hunters. Some years ago I visited a farm-house
in the north of England, whose owner had a taste for collecting
curiosities of all sorts. Not the least valuable of his collection
was a splendidly carved oak bedstead, which he considered of great
antiquity. Its date, plainly marked upon the panels at the bottom
of the front posts, was, he told me, 1111. On {359} examining this
astounding date a little closely, I soon perceived that the two middle
strokes had a slight curvature, a tendency to approach the shape of an
S, which distinguished them from the two exterior lines. The date was,
in fact, 1551; yet so small was the difference of the figures, that
the mistake was really a pardonable one.

Is your correspondent "E.V." acquainted with the _History of Castle
Acre Priory_, published some years ago? If my memory fails me not,
there is a date given in that work, as found inscribed on the plaster
of the Priory wall, much more ancient than 1445.

Has the derivation of the first four Arabic numerals, and probably
of the ninth, from the ancient Egyptian hieratic and enchorial
characters, for the ordinals corresponding with those numbers, ever
been noticed by writers upon the history of arithmetical notation?
The correspondence will be obvious to any one who refers to the table
given in the 4th vol. of Sir G. Wilkin