80. _Southampton Brasses._--French Church, otherwise God's House, Southampton. About eight or nine years ago, two monumental brasses were discovered, in making some alterations in this church. I should feel greatly obliged to any correspondent who could give me a description of them, and inform me if they are still to be found there.
81. _Borough-English._--Which are the towns or districts in England in which _Borough-English_ prevails or has prevailed; and are there any instances on record of its being carried into effect in modern times?
82. _Passage in St. Bernard._--Wordsworth's _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, Part II. 1.:
"Here man more purely lives, less oft doth fall, More promptly rises, walks with nicer heed, More safely rests, dies happier, is freed Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains withal A brighter crown."
_Note._--"Bonum est nos hic esse, quia homo vivit purius, cadit rarius, surgit velocius, incedit cautius, quiescit securius, moritur felicius, purgatur citius, præmiatur copiosius."--_Bernard._
"This sentence," says Dr. Whitaker, "is usually inscribed in some conspicuous part of the Cistertian houses." I cannot find in St. Bernard's works the passage to which Wordsworth's sonnet alludes, though I often see it referred to: e. g. Whitehead's _College Life_, p. 44., 1845; and Mrs. Jameson's _Legends of the Monastic Orders_, Preface. Can any of your correspondents direct me to it?
83. _Spenser's Faerie Queene_ (b. ii. c. ix. st. 22.).--
"The frame thereof seemed partly circulare, And part triangulare," &c.
Warton (_Observations on the Fairy Queen_, vol. i. p. 121.) says that the philosophy of this abstruse stanza describing the Castle of Alma is explained in a learned epistle of Sir Kenelm Digby addressed to Sir Edward Stradling. In a foot-note he states that this epistle was--
"First printed in a single pamphlet, viz., _Observations on XXII Stanza, &c._, Lond. 1644, 8vo. It is also published in Scrinia Sacra, 4to. pag. 244. London, 1654."
Could any of your readers, acquainted with Sir Kenelm Digby's works, give his explanation of this stanza? There is no note on it in the one-volume edition of Spenser lately published by Moxon. The best explanation of it that I have seen is in the _Athenæum_, August 12, 1848.