POINTS FROM LETTERS
A HISTORICAL REFERENCE.
On page 487 of Emil Ludwig's Life of Napoleon, the following sentence occurs in the account of the banishment to Elba, 1814-15, and Countess Walewski's visit to him there :— "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."
Can you or any of your readers tell me who was the great Emperor referred to, and who the beautiful tragical woman ? —M. G. A.
[Possibly the Emperor Justinian II., in exile in the Crimea from 695, who married a Chazar princess, Theodora, and re- gained his throne 705.—En. Spectator.]
THE FOOLISH (?) OSTRICH.
Our old friend the ostrich got a double mention in your article on Cotton in the issue dated August 10th. Has this question ever been thoroughly investigated? On the Argentine pampas, the local species, when doing its head-hiding trick, is frequently mistaken for a clump of pampas-grass, and passed over by those in search of it.—GRINGO, Dublin.
THE BLEEDING HORSE.
We have received the following reply from a corre- spondent :—Replying to query in letter from K. E. Daman in issue of August 10th, re inn sign of "The Bleeding Horse." In List of Signboards by Larwood and Hotton (pub. by Hotton, Piccadilly, 1866) : "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.' As a " rendering " this seems curious—the connexion seems vague and the adjective scarcely suitable—but I copy verbatim from the book.
REFERENCE WANTED.
I should be obliged to some reader if the lines applied to Matthew Arnold by Augustine Birrell in his essay, Alleged Obscurity of Robert Browning," are supplied :—
"Whence that completed form of all completeness ?
Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness ? "
They are strangely like Matthew Arnold's own, but I cannot trace them.—W. D. WHITE, Broomrigg, Newmilns, Ayrshire.
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