Essex. _Positives on Glass._--Sometimes, when your sitter is gone, and you hold your portrait up to the light to examine its density, you find in the face and other parts which are dark, so viewed, minute _transparent_ specks, scarcely bigger than a pin's point. When the picture is backed with black lacquer, you have consequently small _black_ spots, which deform the positive, especially when viewed through a lens of short focus. A friend of mine {452} cures this defect very easily. After having applied the amber varnish, he stops out the spots with a little oil-paint that matches the lights of the picture; of course the paint is put upon the varnished side of the glass. When the paint is dry, the black lacquer is carried over the whole as usual. T. D. EATON. Norwich. * * * * * Replies to Minor Queries. _Peculiar Ornament in Crosthwaite Church_ (Vol. viii., p. 200.).--I am exceedingly obliged to CHEVERELLS for his reply to any Query. I am sorry to say that I failed to make a note of the number of the circles; but, as far as I can remember, there are six windows in each aisle, so in all there would be twenty-four, each window having two carved upon it, one on the right jamb without, and the other on the left within. R. W. ELLIOT. Clifton. _Nursery Rhymes_ (Vol. viii., p. 455.).--I would suggest to L. that a consideration of _rhymes_ may sometimes indicate, by the change in the pronunciation, the antiquity of the verse e.g., "Hush aby, baby, on the green _bough_, When the wind blows the cradle will _rock_, And when the bough breaks," &c. Here, according to modern pronunciation, the rhymes of the first couplet are imperfect, so that it was probably composed in the Saxon era, or while the word _bough_ was still pronounced _bog_ or _bock_. J. R. _Milton's Widow_ (Vol. vii., p. 596.; Vol. viii., pp. 12. 134. 200.).--Reading up my arrears of "N. & Q.," which a long absence from England has caused to accumulate, I find frequent inquiries made for some information which I once promised, relative to Milton's widow. I fear that your correspondents on this subject have formed an exaggerated idea of the importance of the expected note, and that they will see but a "ridiculus mus" after all. As I have no means at hand at the present moment wherewith to attempt to elucidate the Minshull genealogy, I shall content myself by simply sending my original notes, namely, brief abstracts of the wills of Thomas and Nathan Paget preserved at Doctors' Commons. Thomas Paget, minister of the gospel at Stockport, in Cheshire, makes his will May 23, 1660; mentions his three daughters Dorothy, Elizabeth, and Mary; and leaves estates at different places in Shropshire to his two sons, Dr. Nathan and Thomas, whom he appoints his executors. He entreats _his cousin Minshull, apothecarie in Manchester_, to be overseer of his will, which was proved October 16, 1660.