we believe he only published one number, consisting of three plates and no letter-press. We hope the manuscripts he has left may form a groundwork for a future topographer. They form part of the large collections for Surrey, in the hands of Mr. Tytam. In 1826, whilst the Royal Hospital and Collegiate Church of St. Katharine, near the Tower, was pulling down, he made a series of drawings on the spot, which it was his intention to have engraved and published. But the greatest effort of his pencil was in the service of his kind patron and friend, John Caley, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A., keeper of the records in the Augmentation Office. For this gentleman Mr. Howlett made finished drawings from upwards of a thousand original seals of the monastic and religious houses of this kingdom." B. HUDSON. Congleton, Cheshire. * * * * * CHAUCER. (Vol. vi., p. 603.) In reference to the question raised by J. N. B., what authority there is for asserting that Chaucer pursued the study of the law at the Temple, I send you the following extract from a sketch of his life by one of his latest biographers, Sir Harris Nicolas: "It has been said that Chaucer was originally intended for the law, and that, from some cause which has not reached us, and on which it would be idle to speculate, the design was abandoned. The acquaintance he possessed with the classics, with divinity, with astronomy, with so much as was then known of chemistry, and indeed with every other branch of the scholastic learning of the age, proves that his education had been particularly attended to; and his attainments render it impossible to believe that he quitted college at the early period at which persons destined for a military life usually began their career. It was not then the custom for men to pursue learning for its own sake; and the most rational manner of accounting for the extent of Chaucer's acquirements, is to suppose that he was educated for a learned profession. The knowledge he displays of divinity would make it more likely that he was intended for the church than for the bar, were it not that the writings of the Fathers were generally read by all classes of students. One writer says that Chaucer was a member of the Inner Temple, and that while there he was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street[3]; and another (Leland) observes, that after he had travelled in France, 'collegia leguleiorum frequentavit.' Nothing, however, is positively known of Chaucer until the autumn of 1359, when he himself says he was in the army with which Edward III. invaded France, and that he served for the first time on that occasion." The following remarks are from the _Life of Chaucer_, by William Godwin, Lond. 1803, vol. i. p. 357.: