er." If R. means to include the _Scottish accent_, he is mistaken as
to Sir William Grant, who retained a strong Scottish _burr_. If he means
only correctness of diction, then I should say the number was not _few_.
Mackintosh's and Jeffery's English was, I think, quite as pure as Horner's;
and Lord Brougham, with much idiosyncrasy, had no _Scotch peculiarities_,
at least--_me judice_--infinitely less than Sir William Grant. I could name
twenty members of the present houses of parliament in whom I have never
detected any "Scotch peculiarity."

C.

_Tristan d'Acunha_ (Vol. ii., p. 358.).--The island is noticed, but
briefly, in p. 54. of the first volume of Perouse's _Voyage round the
World_, Lond. 1799. It is there stated that a tolerably minute account of
it is contained in _Le Neptune Oriental_, by D'Apres (or Apres de
Manvilette). This work was published in Paris, 1775, in two volumes, large
folio.

C.I.R.

_Arabic Numerals_ (Vol.ii., pp. 27. 61. 339.).-- In a work in Arabic, by
Ahmad ben Abubekr bin Wahshih, on Ancient Alphabets, published in the
original, and accompanied with an English translation, by Von Hammer, your
correspondent on the subject of Arabic numerals will find that these
numerals were not invented as arbitrary signs, and borrowed for various
alphabets; but that they are actually taken from an Indian alphabet of nine
characters, the remaining letters being made up at each decimal by
repeating the nine characters, with one or two dots. The English Preface
states that this alphabet is still in use in India, not merely as a
representative of numbers, but of letters of native language. The book is a
neat quarto, printed in London in 1806; and the alphabet occurs in page 7.
of the Arabic original.

E.C.H.

Athenaeum.

_Luther's Hymns_ (Vol. ii., p. 327.).--If F.Q. will turn to Mr. Palmer's
_Origines Liturgicae_, vol. ii. p. 238. 4th edit., he will find that the
sentence in the Burial Service, "In the midst of life we are in death,"
&c., is taken from the _Salisbury Breviary Psalter_. The Salisbury Use was
drawn up by Bishop Osmund in the eleventh century.

N.E.R. (a Subscriber.)

_Bolton's Ace._--What is the meaning of "_Bolton's Ace_," in the following
passage in the address to the reader prefixed to Henry Hutton's _Follies
Anatomie_, 8vo. Lond. 1618? It is passed over by DR. RIMBAULT in his
reprint of the work for the Percy Society in 1842:

"Could ye attacke this felon in's disgrace,
I