POINTS FROM LETTERS

A HISTORICAL REFERENCE.

Allow me to answer a question in one of the letters quoted in your " Points from Letters " of August 24th. The writer quoted a passage from the English version of my Napoleon, p.'487 :- " A thousand years ago a great Emperor was banished and left forsaken on an island ; but from a distant realm a beautiful, tragical woman found her way to him across the sea, and brought to him his son."

The paragraph which ends in this quotation contains the idea that Napoleon's career was a most extraordinary one— so much so as to resemble a fiction—and that telling it seemed like relating a legend of a thousand years ago. Allow me to quote some sentences preceding the foregoing quotation, to explain this :-

" How marvellously are the threads weaving themselves into the tissue of a legend ! With wizard spells this man of forty-five links up epochs and customs. Here he is, a petty prince on a Mediterranean isle : he receives his beloved, the lady with whom he had lived in the imperial palace at SchOnbrann. . . . Who could believe that all this had come to pass within five years ? A hundred years seemed likelier for the accomplishment of so many events. With such nets, what other fish could one expect to catch but the golden ones of the fairy tale ? A thousand years ago.. . ."

I hope these passages will convey the impression that the last sentence was a speculative one, a tone which perhaps has not quite been caught by the English translation.— EMIL LUDWIG, Moscia.

" THE BLEEDING HORSE."

In your issue of August 24th under heading " The Bleeding Horse," a correspondent after quoting : Some publicans who with their trade combine the calling of farrier, set up the sign of the ' Horse and Farrier '—in Ireland rendered as ' The Bleeding Horse,' " says, "as a rendering . . . the con- nexion seems vague," &c. Does the " bleeding " in this case not obviously refer to medicinal bleeding so frequently carried out by the old-fashioned farrier ?—E. G. F.

" Dtexox."

Whilst thanking you for your generous review of my novel, Dickon, may I be allowed to suggest that some of your readers who may be interested in the character of Richard III. as I have portrayed it, would like to pursue the matter further in such works as those by Sir Clements Markham, Horace Walpole, Sir George Buck, Halstead, &c.?—MAIljORIE BOWEN, 37a Craven Terrace, W. 2.

RELIGION AND THE CREEDS.

It is difficult to understand why your correspondent Mr. Ball should pride himself on being spiritually adrift, and by implication contemn those who are at a different stage of grol7tb ,,from himself. A finer, because a humbler, attitude is" that expressed in these words of Una Taylor : " When the eyes of the heart are blind, were it not best to wait by that roadway, like a dog if you will, where others deem they have seen Him pass ? " (The King's Favourite).—C. M. HUDSON, Nutcombe Height, Hindhead.

ST. AUGUSTINE'S BAPTISM.

In your issue of August 17th a correspondent asks if anyone can give information as to where St. Augustine was baptized. I have spent some sixteen years in Milan and have always understood that St. Augustine was baptized in the little chapel near the Church of San Cambrogio. At the time of his baptism it was customary to administer that sacrament by total immersion ; hence the baptistery, near the Cathedral, as in Rome, Florence, Pisa, Naverana, and Parma.—EmmA Milmxn STULZ, Breisach, Germany.

A CORRECTION.

On p. 292 of last week's issue, comparing Mr. Snowden's triumphal return to that of Disraeli, we should have written " Berlin," of course, not Vienna. We are grateful to the correspondent, E. J. Beavis, of Sheen Lane, S.W. 14, who has pointed out this slip.

AN APOLOGY.

[Last week we corrected the misstatement which occurred in the communication to the Spectator of August 31st, signed H. B. B., paying tribute to the late Mr. Harold Grimshaw. We should like to make clear that the mistake arose in the Spectator office by a confusion of the names of the late Dame Millicent Fawcett with that of the still vigorous Dame Henrietta' Barnett. The' mistake was not H. B. B.'s.—Ep. Spectator.]