"The late Lord C. (Castlereagh?) of Ireland had a curious theory about names; he held that _every_ man with _three_ names was a Jacobin. His instances in Ireland were numerous; Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Theobald Wolfe Tone, James Napper Tandy, John Philpot Curran, &c.: and in England he produced as examples, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley {627} Sheridan, John Horne Tooke, Francis Burdett Jones," &c. Perhaps the noble lord thought with Sterne in _Tristram Shandy_, though the _nexus_ is not easy to discover, that "there is a strange kind of magic bias, which good or bad names irresistibly impose upon our character and conduct," or perhaps he had misread that controverted passage in Plautus (_Aulular._ Act II. Sc. 4.): "Tun' _trium literarum_ homo Me vituperas? _Fur._" The custom is now almost universal; and as, according to Camden (_Remaines, &c._, p. 96.), "Shortly after the Conquest it seemed a disgrace for a gentleman to have but one single name, as the meaner sort and bastards had," so now, the _tria nomina nobiliorum_ have become so common, as to render the epigram upon a certain M. L-P. Saint-Florentin, of almost universal applicability as a neat and befitting epitaph. "On ne lui avait pas epargne," says the biographer of this gentleman (_Biographie Universelle_, tom. xxxix. p. 573.), "les epigrammes de son vivant; il en parut encore contre lui au moment de sa mort; en voici une:-- 'Ci git un petit homme a l'air assez commun, Ayant porte _trois noms_, et n'en laissant _aucun_.'" WILLIAM BATES. Birmingham. Leopold William Finch, fifth son of Heneage, second Earl of Nottingham, born about the year 1662, and afterwards Warden of All Souls, is an earlier instance of an English person with two Christian names than your correspondent J. J. H. has noticed. J. B. * * * * * WEATHER RULES. (Vol. vii., p. 522.) Your correspondent J. A., JUN., makes a Note and asks a question regarding a popular opinion prevalent in Worcestershire, on the subject of a "Sunday's moon," as being one very much addicted to rain. In Sussex that bad repute attaches to the moon that changes on Saturday: "A Saturday's moon, If it comes once in seven years, it comes too soon." It may be hoped that the time is not far distant when a scientific meteorology will dissipate the errors of the traditional code now in existence. Of these errors none have greater or more extensive prevalence than the superstitions regarding the influence of the moon on the atmospheric phenomena of wet and dry weather. Howard, the author of _The Climate of London_, after twenty years of close observation, could not determine that the moon had any perceptible influence on the weather. And the best authorities now follow, still more decidedly, in the same train.