rve the brevity of the Latin in an English version:

All that I really was lies here in dust;
That which was death before is life, I trust.
To be what _is_, is not, I ween, to _be_;
_Is_ not, but _will be_ in eternity.

H. C. K.

---- Rectory, Hereford.

I think your correspondent A. B. R. is not quite correct in his version
of the epitaph of which he inquires the sense. It is evidently intended
for two hexameter verses, and, as I have heard it, runs thus:

"Quod fuit esse, quod est; quod non fuit esse, quod esse;
Esse quod est, non esse; quod est, non est, erit, esse."

I inclose a similar epitaph in another churchyard (the _locale_ of which
I do not know), which may serve to elucidate its meaning:

"That which a Being was, what is it? show:
That being which it was, it is not now.
To be what 'tis is not to be, you see;
That which now is not shall a Being be."

Q. S.

_Straw Bail_ (Vol. vii., p. 85.).--In connexion with, though not as a
reply to, MR. CURTIS'S Query touching the origin of the expression "A
man of straw," I beg to bring under notice a phrase I heard for the
first time a few days ago, but which may nevertheless be well known to
others. A seaman, talking to me of a strike for wages among the crew of
a ship, said that the captain, as the rate of wages had not been raised,
had manned his ship with a "lot of straw-yarders." On my asking the
meaning of the expression, I was told that a "straw-yarder" was a man
about the docks who had never been to sea, and knew little or nothing of
the duties of a seaman.

BRUTONIENSIS.

_Pearl_ (Vol. vi., p. 578.; Vol. vii., pp. 18. 166.).--In the Old
German, _merikrioz_ is pearl; and in the Ang.-Sax. it is
_meregreot_,--the latter from _mere_, sea, and _greot_, grit, sand, or
_grot_, an {343} atom. These are so similar to the Greek _margaritas_,
and the _margarita_ of the sister language (Latin), that we may be
excused believing they have a common origin; more especially as we find
the first syllable (at least?) in almost all the cognate Indo-Germanic
or Indo-European languages: Latin, _mare_; Celt., _mor_; Gothic,
_marei_; Sax., _maere_ or _mere_; Old Germ., _meri_; Slavon., _more_ and
_morze_; Swed., _mar_; Iceland, _mar_; Esthon., _merri_; Lett.,
_marrios_.

Among modern languages, we have,--Span., _margarita_; Ital., _margarita_
and _maugherita_; Fr., _marguerite_, but used only in the proverb, "Il
ne faut