h, as it were, or antechamber before the schools, which are
the scene of the greater examinations for the degree.

H. C. K.

If your correspondent will refer to the word _Parvisium_, in the Glossary
at the end of Watt's edition of Matthew Paris, he will find a good deal of
information. To this I will add that the word is now in use in Belgium in
another sense. I saw some years since, and again last summer, in a street
leading out of the Grande Place, by one side of the Halle at Bruges, on a
house, this notice,--

"IN PERVISE
VERKOOPT MEN DRANK."

D. P.

Begbrook.

* * * * *

THE COENACULUM OF LIONARDO DA VINCI.

(Vol. vii., pp. 524, 525.)

MR. SMIRKE's paper, questioning the received opinion as to the points of
time and circumstance {625} expressed in this celebrated fresco, contains
the following sentence:

"The work in question is now so generally accessible, through the
medium of _accurate_ engravings, that any one may easily exercise his
own judgment on the matter."

Having within no very distant period spent an hour or two in examining the
original, with copies lying close at hand for the purposes of comparison,
allow me to offer you a few impressions of which, while fresh, I "made a
note" in an interleaved copy of Bishop Burnet's curious _Tour in Italy_,
which served me as a journal while abroad. Burnet mentions the Dominican
Convent at Milan as in his day "very rich." My note is as follows:

"The Dominican convent is now suppressed. It is a cavalry barracks:
dragoons have displaced Dominicans. There is a fine cupola to the
church, the work of Bramante: in the salle or refectory of this convent
was discovered, since Burnet's time, under a coat of wash or plaster,
the celebrated fresco of Lionardo da Vinci, now so well known to the
world by plates and copies, better finished than the original ever was,
in all probability; certainly better than it is now, after abuse,
neglect, damp, and, worst of all, _restoring_, have done their joint
work upon it. A visit to this fresco disenchants one wonderfully. It is
better to be satisfied with the fine engravings, and let the original
live in its ideal excellence. The copyists have taken some liberties,
of which these strike me as the chief:

"First, The Saviour's head is put more on one side, in what I would
call a more languishing position than its ac