In reference to the Query by X. Y. Z., as to whether Bishop Butler died in the Roman Catholic communion, allow me to refer your correspondent to the contents of the letters from Dr. Forster and Bishop Benson to Secker, then Bishop of Oxford, concerning the last illness and death of the prelate in question, deposited at Lambeth amongst the private MSS. of Archbishop Seeker, "as negative arguments against the calumny of his dying a Papist." Than the allegations that Butler died with a Roman Catholic book of devotion in his hand, and that the last person in whose company he was seen was a priest of that persuasion, nothing can be more unreasonable, if at least it be meant to deduce from these unproved statements that the bishop agreed with the one and held communion with the other. Dr. Forster, his chaplain, was with him at his death, which happened about 11 A.M., June 16; and this witness observes (in a letter to the Bishop of Oxford, June 18) that "the last four-and-twenty hours preceding which [_i. e._ his death] were divided between short broken slumbers, and intervals of a calm but disordered talk when awake." Again (letter to Ditto, June 17), Forster says that Bishop Butler, "when, for a day or two before his death, he had in a great measure lost the use of his faculties, was perpetually talking of writing to your lordship, though without seeming to have anything which, at least, he was at all capable of communicating to you." Bishop Benson writes to the Bishop of Oxford (June 12) that Butler's "attention to any one or anything is immediately lost and gone;" and, "my lord is incapable, not only of reading, but attending to anything read or said." And again, "his attention to anything is very little or none." There was certainly an interval between this time (June 12) and "the last four-and-twenty hours" preceding his death, during which, writes Bishop Benson (June 17), Butler "said kind and affecting things more than I could bear." Yet, on the whole, I submit that these extracts, if fully weighed and considered with all the attending circumstances, contain enough of even positive evidence to refute conclusively the injurious suspicions alluded to by X. Y. Z., if such are still current. J. R. C. * * * * * MITIGATION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT TO FORGERS. (Vol. iv., p. 434., &c.) I have asked many questions, and turned over many volumes and files of newspapers, to get at the real facts of the cases of mitigation stated in "N. & Q." Having winnowed the chaff as thoroughly as I could, I send the very few grains I have found. Those only who have searched annual registers, magazines, and journals for the foundation of stories defective in names and dates, will appreciate my difficulties.