N KENNETT.

Passing by Blackfriars Bridge, I missed the magnificent gates (iron)
erected by Brackly Kennett, Esq. the inactive Lord Mayor of London, A.D.
1780, during the time of the riots, and who used to pass his time at the
"Jacob's Well," Barbican. I could not help remembering these lines,
which were related to me long ago--

"When Rome was burning, poets all agree,
Nero sat playing on his tweedle-dee;
So Kennett,[3] when he saw sedition ripe,
And London burning, calmly smoked his pipe."

[3] For which he was committed to the Tower, where he died.

* * * * *

VALENTINE'S DAY

Had its origin with the Romans, and was fathered upon St. Valentine in
the early ages of the Church to christianize it. Brand, in his Popular
Antiquities, supposes that the observance originated in an ancient Roman
superstition of choosing patrons on this day for the ensuing year--a
custom which gallantry took up when superstition, at the reformation,
had been compelled to let it fall.

H.H.

* * * * *

PITT'S DIAMOND.

(_To the Editor._)

Allusion being made the other evening by Sir R. Inglis, in the debate on
Lord John Russell's reform motion, relative to a gentleman of the name
of Pitt sitting in that House in right of possessing a very large
diamond, the following particulars may not prove uninteresting to the
numerous readers of the _Mirror_:--

Thos. Pitt, Esq., anciently of Blandford, in the county of Dorset,
afterwards Earl of Londonderry, was, in the reign of Queen Anne, made
Governor of Fort St. George, in the East Indies, where he resided many
years, and became possessed, by trifling purchase, or by barter, of a
diamond, which he sold to the King of France for 135,000l. sterling,
weighing 127 carats, and commonly known at that day by the name of
Pitt's Diamond.

JAC-CO.

* * * * *

ANCESTRY.

It may not be generally known that there is a small town in France which
no one can enter without interest, from the consideration that Demetrius
Commene once lived there, a man boasting a pedigree that traced him from
the line of the Roman emperor Trajan. He was living in the time of
Voltaire, and was a captain in the French army. His pedigree was the
noblest of any man then living, or that has since lived, for he had
twenty-six kings for his ancestors, and eighteen emperors. Of these, six
were emperors of Con