CAT'S PAW!

The term cat's paw, or the phrase, "he is the cat's paw of the party," took its origin from the following anecdote: "A monkey and a turnspit, a kind of dog between the lurcher and the terrier, were at one period considered indispensable requisites in the culinary department, yclept the kitchen. Our readers will recollect the story of the roasted chestnuts in Don Saltero's kitchen, where the monkey, taking a fancy to them as they were crackling within the bars of the fireplace, caught hold of the cat as she lay sleeping before the fire, and made use of her paw to withdraw some of the chestnuts from the scorching situation in which they were placed. From this circumstance, when one person pushes forward another to do that which he himself is either afraid to do, or ashamed to appear in, originated the saying, "he is the cat's paw of such a one," or "he is the cat's paw of the party.”

JACK KETCH.

It is now about one hundred and ninety years ago since one Dun, the then finisher of the law, departed this life, when one Jack Ketch was advanced to the office, and who has left his name to his successors ever since. This appears from Butler's "Ghost," published in 1682.

When the author wrote the first

part of it, it is plain that Dun was the executioner's name, or nick-name:

"For you yourself to act 'Squire Dun

Such ignominy ne'er saw the sun;"

but before he had printed off his poem, Jack Ketch was in office;

"Till Ketch observing he was chous'd,

And in his profits much abus'd,
In open hall the tribunes dunn'd
To do his office, or refund."

MY LORD!

This title has a Grecian origin. 'My Lord" was a nickname for deformed men, and is from the Greek word lordus, i.e., crooked. During the feudal times the lower class, by way of humour, called a man that was half an idiot, or deformed, "My Lord," in ridicule of their superiors. "This, we suspect," says a writer in the "New Monthly Magazine," "is a popular fallacy; for after a careful perusal of the most approved works that treat of nobility, and of its origin, in these realms in particular, we are left very much in the dark as to the original patent in which this branch of it is recognized." Neither Camden, in his "Etymologie and Original of Barons," nor Dugdale, in his "Baronetage of England," nor Selden (a more exact and laborious inquirer than either), in his "Titles of

Honour," afford a glimpse of satisfaction upon the subject. There is an heraldic term, indeed, which seems to imply gentility, and the right to coat armour (but nothing further), in persons thus qualified. But the sinister bend is more properly interpreted, by the best writers on this science, of some irregularity of birth than of bodily conformation. Nobility is either hereditary or by creation, commonly called patent. Of the former kind the title in question cannot be, seeing the notion of it is limited to a personal distinction, which does not necessarily follow in the blood. Honours of this nature, as Mr. Anstis very well observes, descend moreover in a right line. It must be by patent then, if anything. But who can show it? How comes it to be dormant? Under what king's reign is it pretended? Among the grounds of nobility cited by the learned Mr. Ashmole, after Services in the Field or in the Council Chamber," he judiciously sets down, "Honours conferred by the sovereign out of mere benevolence, or as favouring one subject rather than another, for some likeness or conformity observed (or but supposed) in him to the royal nature;" and instances the graces showered upon Charles Brandon, who "in his goodly person being thought not a little to favour the port and bearing of the king's own Majesty, was by that Sovereign, Henry VIII., for some or one of these respects highly promoted and preferred." Here, if

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anywhere, we thought we had discovered a clue to our researches. But after a painful investigation of the rolls and records under the reign of Richard III., or Richard Crouchback, as he is more usually designated in the chronicles, from a traditionary stoop or gibbosity in that part, we do not find that that monarch conferred any such lordships, as are here pretended, upon any subject or subjects, on a simple plea of "conformity" in that respect to the "royal nature." The posture of affairs in those tumultuous times, preceding the battle of Bosworth, possibly left him at no leisure to attend to such niceties. Further than his reign we have not extended our inquiries; the kings of England who preceded, or followed him, being generally described by historians. to have been of straight and clean limbs, the "natural derivative (says Daniel) of high blood, if not its primitive recommendation to such ennoblement, as denoting strength and martial prowess-the qualities. set most by in that fighting age." Another motive, which inclines us to scruple the validity of this claim, is the remarkable fact, that none of the persons in whom the right is supposed to be vested, do ever insist upon it themselves. There is no instance of any of them "sueing his patent," as the law-books call it; much less of his having actually stepped up into his proper seat, as, so qualified, we might expect that some of them would have had the spirit to do, in the

House of Lords. On the contrary, it seems to be a distinction thrust upon them. Their title of Lord (says one of their own body, speaking of the common people) I never much valued, and now I entirely despise and yet they will force it upon me as an honour which they have a right to bestow, and which I have none to refuse." Upon a dispassionate review of the subject, we are disposed to believe that there is no right to the peerage incident to mere bodily configuration; that the title in dispute is merely. honorary, and depending upon the breath of the common people; which in these realms is so far from the power of conferring nobility, that the ablest constitutionalists have agreed in nothing more unanimously, than in the maxim that the king is the sole fountain of honour.

STALKING HORSE.

This general term for some insignificant person or thing, thrust intentionally forward to conceal a more important object, had orginally a more definite meaning. The Albanian sportsmen, Dr. Clark says, still use it, practising the old method of shooting with one, i.e., by carrying the picture of a horse or a cow, behind which they concealed themselves, and take their aim through a hole in the picture. Among us, the "stalking-horse" was either a real horse (an old jade trained for the purpose), and walking up and