bum--Gesmas and Desmas--"Quod
fuit esse"--Straw Bail--Pearl--Sermons by Parliamentary
Chaplains, &c. 338

MISCELLANEOUS:--
Notes on Books, &c. 345
Books and Odd Volumes wanted 346
Notices to Correspondents 346
Advertisements 346

* * * * *

NOTES.

JACK.

I wish to note, and to suggest to students in ethnology, the Query, how
it comes to pass that John Bull has a peculiar propensity to call things
by his own name, his familiar appellative of _Jack_?

Of all the long list of abbreviations and familiar names with which
times past and present have supplied us, that which honest Falstaff
found most pleasing to his ears, "_Jack_ with my familiars!" is the
household word with which ours are most conversant. Were not _Jack_ the
Giant-killer, _Jack_ and the Bean-stalk, and Little _Jack_, the
intimates of our earliest days? when we were lulled to sleep by ditties
that told of _Jack_ Sprat and his accommodating wife (an instance of the
harmony in which those of opposite tastes may live in the bonds of
wedlock); of _Jack_, the bachelor who lived harmoniously with his
fiddle, and had a soul above the advice of his utilitarian friend; of
_Jack_ who, like Caliban, was to have a new master; of _Jack_[1] the
brother of Gill; and of the _Jack_ who was only remarkable for having a
brother, whose name, as a younger son, is not thought worthy of mention.
And were not our waking hours solaced by songs, celebrating the good
Jack[2], little _Jack_ Horner, and holding up to obloquy the bad Jack,
naughty _Jacky_ Green, and his treachery to the innocent cat? Who does
not remember the time when he played at _jack_-straws, fished for
_jack_-sharps, and delighted in a skip-_jack_, or _jack_-a-jumper, when
_jack_-in-a-box came back from the fair (where we had listened not
unmoved to the temptations of that eloquent vagabond cheap-_Jack_) and
popped up his nose before we could say _Jack_ {326} Robinson; and when
_Jack_-in-the-green ushered in May-day? While a halo of charmed
recollections encircles the memory of _Jack_-pudding, dear to the
Englishman as Jack Pottage and Jack Sausage (Jean Potage and Hans Wurst)
are to Frenchman and German.

Our childhood past, _Jack_ still haunts us at