I fear this has degenerated from a Note into a Query; however, I may state in conclusion, that MR. GRAVES is in error in styling the hat on Bishop Routh's monument a cardinal's, for all Catholic prelates, and abbots also, have their armorial bearings surmounted by a hat, exactly similar to a cardinal's hat, with this difference only, that the number of tassels depending from it varies according to the rank of the prelate, from the _cardinal's_ with fifteen tassels in five rows, down to that of a _prior_ with three only on each side in two rows.
_Cardinal Erskine_ (Vol. ii., p. 406.; Vol. iii., p. 13.).--Several notices of this ecclesiastic have appeared in "N. & Q.," but as none of them give the exact information required, I now do so, though perhaps tardily. He was born 13th February, 1753, at Rome, where his father, Colin Erskine, a Jacobite, and exiled scion of the noble Scottish house of Erskine, Earls of Kellie, had taken up his residence. "Monsignor Charles Erskine," having embraced the ecclesiastical life at an early age, and passed through several gradations in the Church of Rome, was, in 1785, "Promotore della Fede," an office of the Congregation of Rites; in 1794 auditor to Pope Pius VI., and raised to the purple by Pope Pius VII., who created him a _Cardinal_-Deacon of the Holy Roman Church, 25th February, 1801. Cardinal Erskine accompanied the latter pontiff in his exile from Rome in the year 1809, and died at Paris, 19th March, 1811, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and eleventh of his cardinalate.
_"Ne'er to these chambers," &c._ (Vol. vii., p. 14.).--In reply to ARAM'S Query: "Where do these lines come from?" they come from Tickell's sublime and pathetic "Elegy on the Death of Addison." ARAM ("Wits have short memories," &c.) has _misquoted_ them. In a poem of so high a mood, to _displace_ a word is to destroy a beauty. ARAM has _interpolated_ several words. The following is the _true_ version:
"Ne'er to these chambers, where the mighty rest, Since their foundation, came a nobler guest, Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss convey'd A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade."
These lines are taken from the "Elegy on the Death of Addison," written by Tickell. They are, if I remember rightly, inscribed on the gravestone recently placed over his remains by the Earl of Ellesmere, in the north aisle of Henry VII.'s Chapel. The last two lines which your correspondent quotes should be as follows: