the
streets and roads; and in March, easterly winds prevailed with
extraordinary violence. For the verification of these facts, consult
the Meteorological diaries in the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of the above
period.]

_Athens._--What is the origin of the term "violet-crowned city," as applied
to Athens? Macaulay uses the expression in his _History of England_, but
does not state how it was acquired.

E. A. T.

[The ancient Greeks and Romans, at their festive entertainments, wore
garlands of flowers, and the violet was the favourite of the Athenians,
than whom no people were more devoted to mirth, conviviality, and
sensual pleasure. Hence the epithet was also given to Venus, [Greek:
Kupris iostephanos], as in some verses recorded by Plutarch, in his
_Life of Solon_. Aristophanes twice applies the word to his sybarite
countrymen: _Equites_, v. 1323., and _Acarn._ i. 637.]

_James Miller._--Who was Miller, mentioned by Warburton as a writer of
farces about 1735?

I. R. R.

[James Miller, a political and dramatic writer, was born in Dorsetshire
in 1703. He received his education at Wadham College, Oxford; and while
at the university, wrote a satiric piece called _The Humours of
Oxford_, which created him many enemies, and hindered his preferment.
He also published several political pamphlets against Sir Robert
Walpole; and also the tragedy of _Mahomet_, and other plays. He died in
1744.]

* * * * *

Replies.

BRYDONE.

(Vol. ix., pp 138. 255. 305. 432.)

TRAVELLER having honoured me by alluding to a little work of mine, written
thirty-five years ago, I may perhaps be permitted to correct a few errors
(trifling, because personal) in his notice. My affinity was that of a
cousin, not uncle, to the late lord my predecessor. I never had the
military rank assigned to me, but was at the time like TRAVELLER himself, a
"youngster" freshly emancipated from Oxford to the Continent: and had
little more pretension in printing the extracts from my Journal, than to
comply with the kind wishes of many friends and relatives.

But to pass to what is more important, the character of Brydone, at the
time I speak of there were no useful _handbooks_ in existence; and tourists
took for the purpose such volumes of travels as they could carry. Brydone,
for this, was unfit. The French criticism (quoted Vol. ix., 306.) rightly
says