"Even the notion, which is not yet entirely extinct among the vulgar (though Sir T. Browne satisfactorily refuted it by abundant arguments deduced from reason {296} and experience)--the notion that they have a peculiar and disagreeable _smell_, is, perhaps, older than he imagined. Venantius, a bishop of Poictiers, in the sixth century, who holds a place in every _corpus poetarum_, says: 'Abluitur Judæus odor baptismate divo, Et nova progenies reddita surgit aquis. Vincens ambrosios suavi spiramine rores, Vertice perfuso, chrismatis efflat odor.' Venant. _Poemat._, lib. 4. xx. "'Cosa maravigliosa,' says an Italian author, 'che ricevuto il santo Battesimo, non puzzano più.'" I believe the reference "lib. 4. xx." is inaccurate. At least I have not succeeded in finding the lines. That may be an excusable mistake: not so the citing "an Italian author," instead of giving his name, or saying that the writer had forgotten it. The power of baptism over the _Judæus odor_ is spoken of familiarly in the _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_: "Nuper quando unus dixit mihi quod non credit, quod Pfefferkorn adhuc est bonus Christianus: quia dixit quod vidit eum ante unum annum, et adhuc foetebat sicut alius Judæus, et tamen dicunt communiter, quod quando Judæi baptizantur, non amplius foetent; ergo credit quod Pfefferkorn habet adhuc nequam post aures. Et quando Theologi credunt quod est optimus Christianus, tunc erit iterum Judæus, et fides non est ei danda, quia omnes homines habent malam suspicionem de Judæis baptizatis. . . . Sed respondeo vobis ad illam objectum: Vos dicitis quod Pfefferkorn foetet. Posito casu, quod est verum, sicut non credo, neque unquam intellexi, dico quod est alia causa hujus foetoris. Quia Johannes Pfefferkorn, quando fuit Judæus, fuit macellarius, et macellarii communiter etiam foetent: tunc omnes qui audierunt, dixerunt quod est bona ratio."--Ed. Münch: Leipzig, 1827, p. 209. A modern instance of belief in the "odor" is in, but cannot decently be quoted from, _The Stage, a Poem_, by John Brown, p 22.: London, 1819. H. B. C. U. U. Club. _Philip d'Auvergne_ (Vol. vii., p. 236.).--This cadet of a Jersey family, whose capture, when a lieutenant in our royal navy, led to his being in Paris as a prisoner on parole, and thereby eventually to his adoption by the last Prince of Bouillon, was a person of too much notoriety to make it necessary to tell the tale of his various fortunes in your columns; of his imprisonment in the Bastile, and subsequently for a short period in the Temple; his residence at Mont Orgueil Castle in Jersey, for the purpose of managing communications with royalists or other agents, on the opposite French coast; or the dates of his successive commissions in the navy, in which he got upon the list of rear-admirals in 1805, and was a vice-admiral of the blue in 1810.