en resorted to,
had not the indignity of being rendered beardless appeared intolerable.
Under this figure the desolation of a country is threatened. "In the same
day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, by them beyond the
river, even by the King of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet, and
it shall consume the beard" (Isaiah vii. 20.). Again, as a token of grief
and humiliation: "Then Job arose and rent his mantle, and shaved his
beard," &c.--"There came fourscore men, having their heads shaven, and
their clothes rent, and having cut themselves," &c. (Jer. xli. 5.). Or,
thirdly, the allusion may be to the consequence of becoming infected with
some loathsome cutaneous disease. "So Satan smote Job with sore boils from
the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him a potsherd to _scrape_
himself withal" (Job ii. 7, 8.).

J. W. T.

Dewsbury.

_High Dutch and Low Dutch_ (Vol. viii., p. 478.).--Nieder Deutsch, or
rather Neder Duitsch, is the proper name of the Dutch language; at least it
is that which the people of Holland give to it. Low German does not
necessarily mean a vulgar patois. It is essentially as different a language
from High German, or rather more so, as Spanish is from Portuguese. I
believe German purists would point out Holstein, Hanover, Brunswick (not
Dresden), as the places where German is most classically spoken. I wish one
of your German (not Anglo-German) readers would set us right on this point.
The term Dutch, as applied to the language of Holland as distinguished from
that of German, is a comparative modernism in English. High Dutch and Low
Dutch used to be the distinction; and when Coverdale's _Translation of the
Bible_ is said to have been "compared with the Douche," German, and not
what we now call Dutch, is meant. Deutsch, in short, or Teutsch, is the
generic name for the language of the Teutones, for whom Germani, or
Ger-maenner, was not a national appellation, but one which merely betokened
their warlike character.

E. C. H.

_Discovery of Planets_ (Vol. vii., p. 211.).--I should wish to ask MR. H.
WALTER, who has a learned answer about the discovery of planets, whether
the idea which he there broaches of a lost world where sin entered and for
which mercy was not found, be his own original invention, or whether he is
indebted to any one for it, and if so, to whom?

QUAESTOR.

_Gloves at Fairs_ (Vol. viii., pp. 136. 421.).--This title has changed into
a question