An apple or pear, a plum or a cherry, Is a very good thing to make us merry. Soul! soul! &c. The soul-cake referred to in the verses is a sort of bun, which until lately it was an almost general custom for persons to make, and to give to one another on the 2nd of November. Perhaps some of your readers can state whether this custom prevails in other counties in England. It seems to be a remnant of the practice of collecting alms, to be applied to the benefit of the souls of the departed, for which especial masses and services were formerly sung on All Souls' Day. W. FRASER. Minor Notes. _Pasquinade._--To the "Pasquinades" adduced in Vol. iv., p. 292., I may add one of a different character, though of older date, on a former Cardinal. On the decease of Pope Clement IX. in 1669, Cardinal Bona was named amongst those worthy of the tiara, when a French Jesuit (Père Dangières), in reply to a line inscribed, as usual upon those occasions, on the statue of Pasquin, "Papa Bona sarebbe un solecisma," made the following epigram: "Grammaticæ leges plerumque Ecclesia spernit: Fors erit ut liceat dicere Papa Bona. Vana solæcismi ne te conturbet imago, Esset Papa bonus, si Bona Papa foret." The successful candidate, however, was Cardinal Emilio Altieri, who assumed the name of Clement X., in April, 1670: Bona (Giov.) died in October, 1674. J. R. (Cork.) _Monk and Cromwell Families._--It is a singular fact, that an estate granted to George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, for _restoring the monarchy_, was by intermarriage eventually vested in Oliver Cromwell, Esq., of Cheshunt, who died in 1821; being then the last male descendant of the Protector. A SUBSCRIBER. _D'Israeli and Byron._--Lord Byron not only "deeply underscored," in admiration, M. D'Israeli's sentence, as quoted Vol. iv., p. 99., but he also reproduced the same idea in his Monody on Sheridan: "And Folly loves the martyrdom of Fame." ALFRED GATTY. Queries. ROMAN FUNERAL PILE.