Might I ask if there is any writer, ancient or modern, who has recorded that Malta was not the burial-place of Hannibal? W. W. Malta. * * * * * Minor Notes. _Waterloo._--I do not know whether, in any of the numerous lives of the late Duke of Wellington, the following fact has been noticed. In Strada's History of the Belgian war (a work which deserves to be better known and appreciated than it is at present), there occurs a passage which shows that, about three hundred years since, Waterloo was the scene of a severe engagement; so that the late sanguinary struggle was not the first this battle-ground has to boast of. The passage occurs in _Famianæ Stradæ de Bello Belgico, Decas prima_, lib. vi. p. 256., edit. Romæ, 1653; where, after describing a scheme on the part of the insurgents for surprising Lille, and its discovery by the Royalists, he goes on: "Et Rassinghemius de Armerteriensi milite inaudierat: nihilqve moratvs selectis centvmqvinqvaginta peditibvs et equitibus sclopetariis fermè qvinqveginta prope _Waterlocvm_ pagvm pvgnam committit." What makes this more curious is, that, like the later battle, neither of the contending parties on this occasion were natives of the country in which the battle was fought, they being the French Calvinists on one side and the Spaniards on the other. PHILOBIBLION. "_Tuch._"--In "The Synagogue," attached to Herbert's _Poems_, but written by Chr. Harvie, M.A., is a piece entitled "The Communion Table," one verse of which is as follows: "And for the matter whereof it is made, The matter is not much, Although it be of _tuch_, Or wood, or mettal, what will last, or fade; So vanitie And superstition avoided be." S. T. Coleridge, in a note on this passage, printed in Mr. Pickering's edition of Herbert, 1850 (fcap. 8vo.), says: "_Tuch_ rhyming to _much_, from the German _tuch_, cloth: I never met with it before as an English word. So I find _platt_, for foliage, in Stanley's _Hist. of Philosophy_, p. 22." Whether Coleridge rightly appreciated Stanley's use of the word _platt_, I shall not determine; but with regard to _touch_, it is evident that he went (it was the tendency of his mind) to Germany for error, when truth might have been discovered nearer home. The context shows that _cloth_ could not have been intended, for who ever heard of a table or altar made of cloth? The truth is that the poet meant _touchstone_, which the author of the _Glossary of Architecture_ (3rd edit., text and appendix) rightly explains to be "the dark-coloured stone or marble, anciently used for tombstones. A musical sound" (it is added) "may be produced by touching it sharply with a stick." And this is in fact the reason for its name. The author of the _Glossary of Architecture_ cites _Ben Jonson_ by Gifford, viii. 251., and _Archæol._, xvi. 84. ALPHAGE. Lincoln's Inn. {83}