The practice of shutting up rooms in which members of the family had died was retained up to the end of the last century. I learn from a friend that, in a country house in the south of England, his mother's apartment, consisting of a sitting-room, bed-room, and dressing-room, was closed at her death in 1775. The room in which his grandfather had died in 1760 was likewise closed. These four rooms were kept locked up, with the shutters shut, till the year 1793, when the next owner came into possession, who opened them, and caused them to be again used. Probably other cases of the same sort may be known to your correspondents, as having occurred in the last century; but the custom appears to be now extinct. L. _Standfast's Cordial Comforts._--I have lately procured a copy of an interesting book, entitled "A Little Handful of Cordial Comforts: scattered throughout several Answers to Sixteen Questions and Objections following. By Richard Standfast, M.A., Rector of Christ Church in Bristol, and Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles II. Sixth Edition. Bristol, 1764. 18mo. pp. 94." Can any of your readers give me further particulars of Mr. Standfast, or tell me where to find them? In what year was the work first published? It was reprinted in Bristol in 1764, "for Mr. Standfast Smith, apothecary, great-grandson of the author." Has any later edition appeared? ABHBA. _"Predeceased" and "Designed."_--J. Dennistoun, in his _Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino_, ii. p. 239., says-- "His friend the cardinal had lately predeceased him." Can any of your readers give me an instance from any one of our standard classical authors of a verb active "to decease"? The same author uses the word _designed_ several times in the sense of _designated_. I should be glad of a few authorities for the use of the word in this sense. W. A. _Lady Fights at Atherton._--A poem, published in 1643, in honour of the King's successes in the West, has the following reference to a circumstance connected with Fairfax's retreat at Atherton Moor: "When none but lady staid to fight." I should be glad to learn to what this refers, and whether or not the real story formed the basis of De Foe's account of the fighting lady at Thame, laid about the same period, viz. the early part of the year 1643. JAMES WAYLEN _Sketches of Civil War Garrisons, &c._--During the civil war, sketches and drawings were, no doubt, made of the lines drawn about divers garrisons. Some few of these have from time to time appeared as woodcuts: but I have a suspicion that several remain only in MS. still. If any of your readers can direct me to any collection of them in the British Museum or Oxford, they would shorten a search that has long been made in vain. JAMES WAYLEN.