net and drum
He threaten'd but behold! 'twas all a hum."

Now, the rustic who frightens his neighbour with a turnip lanthorn and a
white sheet, or the spirit-rapping medium, who, for a consideration, treats
his verdant client with a communication from the unseen world, most
decidedly humbugs him; that is, hums or deceives him with an imaginary
spirit, or bug.

W. PINKERTON.

Ham.

I take it that the editor of Archbishop Bramhall's _Works_ was judicious in
not altering the {497} word _pinece_ to _pinnace_, as an object very
different from the latter was meant; _i. e._ a _cimex_, who certainly
_revenges_ any attack upon his person with a _stink_. _Pinece_ is only a
mistaken orthography of _punese_, the old English name of the obnoxious
insect our neighbours still call a _punaise_ (see Cotgrave _in voce_).
Florio says "Cimici, a kinde of vermine in Italie that breedeth in beds and
biteth sore, called punies or wall-lice." We have it in fitting company in
_Hudibras_, III. 1.:

"And stole his talismanic louse,
His flea, his morpion, and punese."

This is only one more instance of the danger of altering the orthography,
or changing an obsolete word, the meaning of which is not immediately
obvious. The substitution of _pinnace_ would have been entirely to depart
from the meaning of the Archbishop.

S. W. S.

* * * * *

MONUMENTAL BRASSES ABROAD.

(Vol. vi., p. 167.)

A recent visit to the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle enables me to add the
following Notes to the list already published in "N. & Q."

The brasses are five in number, and are all contained in a chapel on the
north-west side of the dome:

1. Arnoldus de Meroide, 1487, is a mural, rectangular plate (3' . 10" x 2'
. 4"), on the upper half of which are engraved the Virgin and Child, to
whom an angel presents a kneeling priest, and St. Bartholomew with knife
and book.

2. Johannes Pollart, 1534, is also mural and rectangular (5' . 2-1/2" x 2' .
4"), but is broken into two unequal portions, now placed side by side. The
upper half of the larger piece has the following engraving:--In the centre
stands the Virgin, wearing an arched imperial crown. Angels swing censers
above her head. St. John Baptist, on her right hand, presents a kneeling
priest in surplice and alb; and St. Christopher bears "the mysterious
Child" on her left. The lower half contains part of the long inscription
which is completed on the smaller detach