n the arm sustain'd,
Hung, pendant by a silken ribbon loop
From button of the coat of well-dress'd beau.
'Tis well for manhood that the use has ceased!
For what to _woman_ might be well allow'd,
As suited to the softness of her sex,
Would seem effeminate and wrong in _man_."

WILLIAM BATES.

Birmingham.

_Crescent_ (Vol. vii., p. 235.).--In Judges, ch. viii. ver. 21., Gideon
is recorded to have taken away from Zeba and Zalmunna, kings of Midian,
"the ornaments that were on their camels' necks." The marginal
translation has "ornaments like the moon;" and in verse 24. it is stated
that the Midianites were _Ishmaelites_. If, therefore, it be borne in
mind that Mohammed was an Arabian, and that the Arabians were
Ishmaelites, we may perhaps be allowed to infer that the origin of the
use of the crescent was not as a symbol of Mohammed's religion, but that
it was adopted by his countrymen and followers from their ancestors, and
may be referred to at least as far back as 1249 B.C., when Zeba and
Zalmunna were slain, and when it seems to have been the customary
ornament of the Ishmaelites.

W. W. T.

_The Author of "The Family Journal"_ (Vol. vii., p. 313.).--The author
of the very clever series of papers in the _New Monthly Magazine_, to
which MR. BEDE refers, is Mr. Leigh Hunt. The particular one in which
Swift's Latin-English is quoted, has been republished in a charming
little volume, full of original thinking, expressed with the felicity of
genius, called _Table Talk_, and published in 1851 by Messrs. Smith and
Elder, of Cornhill.

G. J. DE WILDE.

_Parochial Libraries_ (Vol. vi., p. 432. &c.).--I fear that there is
little doubt that these collections of books have very often been
unfairly dispersed. It is by no means uncommon, in looking over the
stock of an old divinity bookseller, to meet with works with the names
of parochial libraries written in them. I have met with many such: they
appear chiefly to have consisted of the works of the Fathers, and of our
seventeenth century divines. As a case in point, I recollect, about ten
years since, being at a sale at the rectory of Reepham, Norfolk,
consequent upon the death of the rector, and noticing several works with
the inscription "Reepham Church Library" written inside: these were sold
indiscriminately with the rector's books. At this distance of time I
cannot recollect the titles of many of the works; but I perfectly
remembe