Chapter 7 Mansfield Ingleby. No.7

Birmingham.

When and where does Sunday begin or end? (Vol. ix., p. 198.).-The Christian festival, commonly called Sunday, named by the ancient church "The Lord's Day," because that thereon the resurrection was accomplished, and the new creation, the work of Messias, commenced, this feast, I say, begins at six o'clock in the evening of Saturday, the last day of the week, at the close of that Hebrew fast; and the end of Sunday arrives at six o'clock in the evening of that first day of the week. When time was measured out, the count began with "the evening," which was created first; and which, with the succeeding morning, reckoned as the first day.

H. of Morwenstow.

This question has been, to a certain extent, before debated by Mr. Johnson in his addenda to his Clergyman's Vade Mecum, pp. 106, 107., and Ecclesiastical Law, as quoted by Wheatly, who combated his reasoning of Sunday beginning at six o'clock on the Saturday evening. Johnson rests his argument upon Deuteronomy xvi. 6., where the sacrifice of the passover is ordered "at even, on the going down of the sun;" upon Exodus xii. 6., where the whole "congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening;" and I think he might have also taken Genesis i. 5., "And the evening and the morning were the first day." Johnson says that

"The Church of England has divided her nights and days according to the Scriptural, not the civil account: and that though our civil day begins from midnight, yet our ecclesiastical day begins at six in the evening.... The proper time for vesper, or evening song, is six of the clock, and from that time the religious day begins."

Wheatly admits that "the festival is not past till evensong is ended," but does not agree to its commencing on the preceding evensong; for if it does, he cannot reconcile the rubric at the end of the Table of Vigils.

On the whole, I think Johnson has the best of the argument: and that Sunday begins ecclesiastically at six in the evening on Saturday; civilly, at midnight.

R. J. S.

Precious Stones (Vol. viii., p. 539.; Vol. ix., pp. 37. 88.).-Respecting precious stones, some information may be gleaned from the notes to Sir John Hill's translation of Theophrastus' History of Stones (8vo., 2nd edit., London, 1774).

J. M.

Oxford.

Scotch Grievance (Vol. ix., p. 160.).-Your correspondents refer to coins of a period when the Scotch do not complain. Their grievance, as alleged, is as to the mode of bearing the lion since the Union in 1707; to which the instances quoted, between the time of James I. and William III., have no reference.

G.

"Corporations have no Souls," &c. (Vol. viii, p. 587.).-The following, which I extract from Hone's Table-Book, is probably the remark to which your correspondent B. alludes:

"Mr. Howel Walsh, in a corporation case tried at the Tralee assizes, observed that a corporation cannot blush. It was a body, it was true; had certainly a head-a new one every year-an annual acquisition of intelligence in every new lord mayor. Arms he supposed it had, and long ones too, for it could reach at anything. Legs, of course, when it made such long strides. A throat to swallow the rights of the community, and a stomach to digest them! But who ever yet discovered, in the anatomy of any corporation, either bowels or a heart?"

Henry H. Breen.

St. Lucia.

Devereux Bowly (Vol. ix., p. 173.).-In reply to Uneda's inquiry, Devereux Bowly, watchmaker, of Lombard Street, London, died Mar. 15, 1773, in his seventy-eighth year.

He was a member of the Society of Friends, and being at the time of his decease a widower, and without family, he left a large portion of his property to their school, then at Clerkenwell, in the neighbourhood of which he resided.

T. S. N.

Reversible Names (Vol. viii., pp. 244. 655.).-There is a gentleman in this island who bears the name and surname of Xuaved Devaux, which are mutually reversible.

Henry H. Breen.

St. Lucia.

Your correspondent Balliolensis, in speaking of reversible or palindromic English names, seems to have overlooked the names of Hannah and Anna.