370. _Legal Time._--The town clerk of Exeter, a short time since, in reply to the question "What is legal time?" said, that "one of the courts of law had decided (in reference to a young lady becoming of age in London) that St. Paul's was so." Now St. Paul's, as well as all other London clocks, keeps Greenwich time. Query, _Is_ St. Paul's time legal time? Is it so because it is the cathedral clock of London, or because it is a commonly recognised standard of time for London? EXON. Minor Queries Answered. _Thorns of Dauphine._--What is the meaning of the proverb mentioned by Bishop Jeremy Taylor: "The Thorns of Dauphine will never fetch blood, if they do not scratch the first day?"--_Sermon XVI._ "Of Growth in Sin," p. 319. Lond. 1678. fol. RT. Warmington. [Montaigne, in his _Essays_, book i. chap. lvii., quotes this proverb, and gives a clue to its meaning. He says: "For my part I believe our souls are adult at twenty, as much as they are ever like to be, and as capable then as ever. A soul that has not by that time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after come to proof. Natural parts and excellences produce what they have of vigorous and fine within that term, or never: 'Si l'espine non picque quand nai, A peue que picque jamai,' as they say in Dauphiny."] _Inscription at Lyons._--In Bishop Burnet's _Travels_ (1685), he mentions a monumental inscription which he saw at Lyons, of a certain lady, "Quæ nimia pia"--"Facta est Impia," whom he conjectures, and with some probability, to have been a Christian lady, declared impious because she refused to confess the "Gods many and Lords many" of the heathen. The conclusion of the epitaph is perplexing: it states that her husband dedicated it to her and her son's memory--under "the axe"--"Sub asciâ dedicavit." I have looked in vain for any explanation of this expression, in any account within my reach of Roman funerals: possibly some of your correspondents may help me to an explanation. Burnet, while he is acute in noting the contradictory expression above, wholly overlooks this. It may mean that her husband performed this act of piety in the face of danger and persecution,--as we should say, "with the axe hanging over his head;" but then the epitaph commences with the letters D. M., signifying "Diis Manibus," leading to the conclusion that the husband was not himself a Christian, though respecting Christianity in the person of his wife. I had not originally intended to copy the epitaph; but as it is not long, and may help the speculations of your readers who have not access to Burnet's _Travels_, p. 5., now a rare book, I subjoin it:--