aign of the councils."

The meaning I receive from this is, "I don't mean to carry you through the
maze of the ancient councils of the church;" but I wish to know the exact
force of the expression "to bid you the base?"

R. (a Reader).

_Saints' Days._--The _chorea invita_ is not a very satisfactory explanation
of St. Vitus's dance; and though St. Vitus is not in the Roman martyrology
of our day, yet he is in the almanacs of the fifteenth century, and
probably earlier. The martyr Vitus makes the 15th of June a red letter-day
in the first almanac ever printed. Who was St. Vitus, and how did he give
his name to the play of the features which is called his dance? Again, the
day before St. Patrick is celebrated in Ireland, St. Patricius is
celebrated in Auvergne. Can any identity be established?

M.

_Chepstow Castle._--In Carlyle's _Life of Cromwell_, vol. i. pp. 349, 350.,
there is a letter from Cromwell, dated before Pembroke, wherein he directs
a Major Saunders, then quartered at or near Brecon, to go to Monmouthshire
and seize Sir Trevor Williams of Llangevie, and Mr. Morgan, High Sheriff of
Monmouth, "as," he writes, "they were very deep in the plot of betraying
Chepstow Castle." Carlyle has the following foot-note to the letter:

"Saunders by his manner of indorsing this letter seems to intimate that
he took his two men; that he keeps the letter by way of voucher. Sir
Trevor Williams by and bye compounds as a delinquent, retires then into
Llangevie House, and disappears from history. Of Sheriff Morgan, except
that a new sheriff is soon appointed, we have no farther notice
whatever."

Can any of your correspondents give me information in what work I can find
a tolerably full account of this "betraying of Chepstow Castle?" and also
of what place in the county was this Morgan, Sheriff of Monmouth?

DANYDD GAM.

_The Wilkes MSS. and "North Briton."_--I inquired long since what had
become of these MSS., which Miss Wilkes bequeathed to Peter Elmsley, of
Sloane Street, "to whose judgement and delicacy" she confided
them,--meaning, I presume, that she should be content to abide by his
judgement as to the propriety of publishing them, or a selection; but
certainly to be preserved for the vindication of her father's memory;
otherwise she would have destroyed them, or directed them to be destroyed.
In 1811 these MSS. were, I presume, in the possession of Peter Elmsley,
Principal of St. Alban's