"Thou shalt not nede to be afraid of any bugs by night." Thus we see that a real "terror of the night" in course of time, assumed, by common consent, the title of the imaginary evil spirit of our ancestors. One word more. I can see no difficulty in tracing the derivation of the word _humbug_, without going to Hamburg, Hume of the Bog, or any such distant sources. In Grose's _Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_, I find the word _hum_ signifying deceive. Peter Pindar, too, writes writes: "Full many a trope from bayonet and drum He threaten'd but behold! 'twas all a hum." Now, the rustic who frightens his neighbour with a turnip lanthorn and a white sheet, or the spirit-rapping medium, who, for a consideration, treats his verdant client with a communication from the unseen world, most decidedly humbugs him; that is, hums or deceives him with an imaginary spirit, or bug. W. PINKERTON. Ham. I take it that the editor of Archbishop Bramhall's _Works_ was judicious in not altering the {497} word _pinece_ to _pinnace_, as an object very different from the latter was meant; _i. e._ a _cimex_, who certainly _revenges_ any attack upon his person with a _stink_. _Pinece_ is only a mistaken orthography of _punese_, the old English name of the obnoxious insect our neighbours still call a _punaise_ (see Cotgrave _in voce_). Florio says "Cimici, a kinde of vermine in Italie that breedeth in beds and biteth sore, called punies or wall-lice." We have it in fitting company in _Hudibras_, III. 1.: "And stole his talismanic louse, His flea, his morpion, and punese." This is only one more instance of the danger of altering the orthography, or changing an obsolete word, the meaning of which is not immediately obvious. The substitution of _pinnace_ would have been entirely to depart from the meaning of the Archbishop. S. W. S. * * * * * MONUMENTAL BRASSES ABROAD. (Vol. vi., p. 167.) A recent visit to the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle enables me to add the following Notes to the list already published in "N. & Q." The brasses are five in number, and are all contained in a chapel on the north-west side of the dome: 1. Arnoldus de Meroide, 1487, is a mural, rectangular plate (3' . 10" x 2' . 4"), on the upper half of which are engraved the Virgin and Child, to whom an angel presents a kneeling priest, and St. Bartholomew with knife and book. 2. Johannes Pollart, 1534, is also mural and rectangular (5' . 2-1/2" x 2' . 4"), but is broken into two unequal portions, now placed side by side. The upper half of the larger piece has the following engraving:--In the centre stands the Virgin, wearing an arched imperial crown. Angels swing censers above her head. St. John Baptist, on her right hand, presents a kneeling priest in surplice and alb; and St. Christopher bears "the mysterious Child" on her left. The lower half contains part of the long inscription which is completed on the smaller detached piece.