_Writing-paper._--I have long been subject to what, in my case, I feel to
be a serious annoyance. For the last twenty years I have been unable to
purchase any letter-paper which I can write upon with comfort and
satisfaction. At first, I was allowed to choose between plain and
hot-pressed; but now I find it impossible to meet with any, which is not
glazed or smeared over with some greasy coating, which renders it very
disagreeable for use with a common quill--and I cannot endure a steel pen.
My style of writing, which is a strong round Roman hand, is only suited for
a quill.
Can any of your correspondents put me in the way of procuring the good
honest letter-paper which I want? I have in vain applied to the stationers
in every town within my reach. Would any of the paper-mills be disposed to
furnish me with a ream or two of the unglazed, plain, and unhotpressed
paper which I am anxious to obtain?
Whilst I am on this subject, I will take occasion to lament the very great
inferiority of the paper generally which is employed in printing books. It
may have a fine, glossy, smooth appearance, but its texture is so poor and
flimsy, that it soon frays or breaks, without the greatest care; and many
an immortal work is committed to a miserably frail and perishable material!
A comparison of the books which were printed a century ago, with those of
the present day, will, I conceive, fully establish the complaint which I
venture to make; and I would particularly remark upon the large Bibles and
Prayer Books which are now printed at the Universities for the use of our
churches and chapels, which are exposed to much wear and tear, and ought,
therefore, to be of more substantial and enduring texture, but are of so
flimsy, brittle, and cottony a manufacture, that they require renewing
every three or four years.
"LAUDATOR TEMPORIS ACTI."
_Little Casterton (Rutland) Church._--Within the communion rails in the
church of Little Casterton, Rutland, there lies in the pavement (or did
lately) a stone, hollowed out like the basin or drain of a piscina, which
some church-hunters have supposed to be a piscina, and have noticed as a
great singularity. The stone, however, did not originally belong to this
church; it was brought from the neighbouring site of the desecrated church
of Pickworth, by the late Reverend Richard Twopeny, who held the rectory of
Little Casterton upwards of sixty years; he had long seen it lying
neglected among the ruins, and at length brought it to his own church to
save it from destruction.
It may be interesting to some of your readers to learn that in the chancel
of Little Casterton are monumental brasses of an armed male and a female
figure, the latter on the sinister side, with the following inscription in
black letter:--
"Hic jacet D[=n]s Thomas Burto[=n] miles quondam d[=u]s de Tolthorp ac
ecclesiae.... patronus qui obiit kalendas Augusti.... d[=n]a Margeria
uxor ejus sinistris quor[um], a[=i]abus ppicietur deus amen."