inlithgow. 1670: Earl of Craven.

D. N.

_Raffaelle's Sposalizio._--Will DIGITALIS, or any of your numerous
correspondents or readers, do me the favour to say why, in Raffaelle's
celebrated painting "Lo Sposalizio," in the gallery of the Brera at Milan,
Joseph is represented as placing the ring on the third finger of _right_
hand of the Virgin?

I noticed the same peculiarity in Ghirlandais's fresco of the "Espousals"
in the church of the Santa Croce at Florence. This I remarked to the
custode, an intelligent old man, who informed {596} me that the connexion
said to exist between the heart and the third finger refers to that finger
of the _right_ hand, and not, as we suppose, to the third finger of the
_left_ hand. He added, that the English are the only nation who place the
ring on the left hand. I do not find that this latter statement is borne
out by what I have seen of the ladies of continental Europe; and I suppose
it was an hallucination in my worthy informant.

I must leave to better scholars in the Italian language than I am, to say
whether "Lo Sposalizio" means "Betrothal" or "Marriage:" certainly this
latter is the ordinary signification.

I have a sort of floating idea that I once heard that at the ceremony of
"Betrothal," now, I believe, rarely if ever practised, it was customary to
place the ring on the right hand. I am by no means clear where I gleaned
this notion.

G. BRINDLEY ACWORTH.

Brompton.

_"To the Lords of Convention."_--Where can I find the _whole_ of the ballad
beginning--

"To the Lords of Convention 'twas Claverh'se that spoke;"

and also the name of the author?

L. EVANS.

_Richard Candishe, M.P._--Pennant (_Tour in Wales_, vol. ii. p. 48.) prints
the epitaph of "Richard Candishe, Esq., of a good family in Suffolk," who
was M.P. for Denbigh in 1572, as it appears on his monument in Hornsey
Church. Who was this Richard Candishe? The epitaph says he was "derived
from noble parentage;" but the arms on the monument are not those of the
noble House of Cavendish, which sprung from the parish of that name in
Suffolk. The arms of Richard Candishe are given as "three piles wavy gules
in a field argent; the crest, a fox's head erased azure."

BURIENSIS.

_Alphabetical Arrangement._--Can any one favour me with a reference to any
work treating of the date of the collection and arrangement in the present
form of the alphabet, either English, Latin, Greek, or Hebrew? or what is
the ear