grievance to the compilers, who get out of the difficulty by sometimes using the simple letter V, and in other cases Vincent; Lord Valentia, for instance, being entered as "V. Valentia." In countrified parts one often hears of ladies who act the part of Lady Bountiful being described as "Ladies as is Ladies," but I was hardly prepared to find that this description had gained a footing in the parochial rate books and the parliamentary returns; so it is, however, and I could mention several cases where plain “Mrs. A.” is returned as "Lady A." A more excusable, but at the same time puzzling vagary, is to enter the numerous class of "Hon. Mesdames" as "Ladies." The letter V is not a prolific one, but two such cases occur in it, "Hon. Mrs. Vernon" and "Hon. Mrs. Vansittart" being entered as "Lady Vernon" and "Lady Vansittart." Titles, however, are no obstacle when, as seems to have been the case in some counties north of the Humber, the parochial authorities were of the Quaker persuasion, for there I find a man's title sometimes denied him in toto. Had the Prince been a Northern landowner, they would have possibly entered him as "Albert E. Guelph." Lord Houghton is re-converted in one county into a commoner, not as Monckton-Milnes, but as "Aaron" Houghton. IV. Addresses.-The general orders of Government were that the rate collectors should give the addresses of the landowner, and not the name of the farm or farms he owned, or the name of the parish in which they lay. This has been done fairly well in some counties, notably the south-eastern, where, if they do not know an owner's address, they either leave it blank, with the name of the place in which the acreage is situate in brackets, or simply insert the address of the firm of lawyers who collect the rents, at No. Lincoln's Inn. In some parts of England the confusion is horrible; for instance, an owner, say Mr. J. T. P. Smith-Green, of Granby Hall, will be described as J. Smith, Little Pedlington-perhaps he only owns an outlying farm there; as J. T. Green Smith, of Granby Hall, his real abode; as John Thomas Plantagenet SMITH-GREEN, of 200, Portland Place, W.; as J. T. P. GREEN-SMITH, of the Fogies' Club, S.W.-the only error in this case being the putting the Green in front of the Smith, and giving his address at his club on the all-sufficient ground that he once dated a letter enclosing a cheque for rates from it; as J. G. Smith, of Aix-les-Bains, for same reason; or as J. T. P. SmytheGreen, of Boulevard, Paris-" Boulevard," "Paris," being all the locus standi given to one owner whose popularity is undoubted, and whose acres are very broad. I have, therefore, had no scruple, where internal evidence is forthcoming in any case, in crediting a man with acres, whether his address be parochial, real country seat, London house, club, such-and-such a regiment, Lincoln's Inn, or any English or foreign watering-place where he may be making a temporary sojourn for economy, health, or any other cause. The Scotch and Irish returns, as regards workmanship, compare most favourably with the English-the Scotch returns being, however, undoubtedly the best. It is curious to note, that while in England and Scotland a man is the unfortunate inmate of an asylum, the compilers discreetly conceal the fact by leaving the address blank; in Ireland, contrariwise, the name of the asylum is always given. Even Scottish counties, like English ones, vary in degrees of goodness and badness; Kirkcudbrightshire being facile princeps in excellence, which is strange, as at low water it almost touches Cumberland, a badly done county, and next neighbour to Lancashire, which is out-and-out the worst done of all counties in England. V. Initials.-These are not always to be trusted. F and T being particular sinners, so much so that I have in this work utterly disregarded the distinction between them, where the addresses are the same, or even in the same neighbourhood. The following case, affecting two estates not far from my own, is a fair example: White, F. G. G., Wethersfield, acres 1,561, val. 2,4917. " 3,576 4,3037. The facts of the case simply these : That Mr. White owned estates in two parishes or more. That in each case his address was correctly given. That one returning authority could not have written an over plain T, but that he gave T as the initial not a soul who knows Essex and remembers poor "Tom" White would for a moment doubt. These entries, I may say, occur, not side by side as I have put them, but on different sheets. The initial of a father's name is frequently given, while he may have been dead and his acres in the son's possession, say ten years. Ten years, however, does not suffice for the eminently conservative county of Somerset, where in one case they "keep the memory of the dead man green" for eighteen years in the rate books, not troubling themselves to substitute the son's name for that of the father. VI. Miscellaneous Blunders.-Such as the mixture of names and addresses; the giving the name of the tenant as owner instead of that of the freeholder; the too liberal use of trusteeships as substitutes for ownerships personal; and lastly the "clerical error" pure and simple. As an instance of the first form of blunder I would mention the case of the late Col. Peers Williams, whose Anglesea estate is given to Col. T. Williams, of "Peers," "Menai Bridge." A curious attempt at the same thing is made in the case of the late Sir Digby Neave, of Dagenham Park, Essex, where the compiler of "Domesday " has tried to fuse the name and address Digby and Dagenham into a harmonious whole-result, "Neaves, Sir D., Bart., Digman Park, Sussex." A fair example of the second class of error is that of Mr. Peckover, of Wisbeach, who is returned as owner of only about 2,000 acres in various counties-his estates amounting to well over 3,000 acres, partly entered in his tenants' names; this sort of error is probably very common in England; while in Ireland it is, excepting faulty addresses, almost the only grievous stumbling-block. Of the third class Sir Walter Barttelot's is noteworthy, Sir Walter being owner of between 3,000 and 4,000 acres, while "Domesday" only allows him something short of 2,400; the balance being entered as the property of various trustees. The last class of blunders is the most hopeless. A mysterious "Mr. Jos. Rewes," in my county, troubled me not a little, being entered as an owner of some 6,000l. a-year in land. Thinking it odd I had never heard of him socially, politically, in the hunting field, or even on a subscription list, I wrote to friends in the close neighbourhood of his supposed estate; they knew him not! I then teased all the neighbouring rate collectors without effect, beyond discovering the existence of a clodhopper named "Reeves," who did not own much more than half an acre. In despair I attacked the Local Government Board, who very civilly investigated the matter, and informed me that "Jos. Rewes" was inserted by a clerical error for "Jas. Tabor," the head of an Essex family, seated in the same parish, who, if “Domesday" were to be trusted, would have had but a few hundreds a-year to live upon. A few gentlemen, in cases of these gross errors, have been at considerable pains to clear them up; some on the contrary nothing will induce them to answer, the consequence being that I have omitted a few acreages, which though exceeding 3,000 acres are palpably in error. Mr. Potts, for instance, of Chester, is down for 5,560 acres in Staffordshire, rented at 2217. a-year. Staffordshire marl is not exactly the same thing as Sutherland bog, as the noble owner of Trentham knows full well, and I may safely affirm that, except in the latter county, Wester Ross, County Mayo, or County Kerry, no such poverty-stricken estate could be found. All endeavours, however, have failed in the case of a "Revd. Scutt," of Bognor, whose existence is denied by the Sussex officials; and of a mysterious estate in county Down, the ownership of which is bandied backwards and forwards by the Irish Local Government Board, Lord Clanwilliam, his second son, and every other "Meade" and "Mead" whose address could be discovered in print. (see Clanwilliam.) In arranging these pages I have drawn the line at 3,000 acres-the line must be drawn somewhere, how it |