_Trumpington Church._--On the north side of the tower of Trumpington Church, Cambridgeshire, there is a curious recess in the basement story, which I have not met with anywhere else, or seen fully accounted for. It is sufficiently capacious for a man to stand in, having an arched entrance six feet in height, with a turning to the westward of about two feet, and is formed completely within the thickness of the wall. The village tradition, that it was formerly used as a confessional, founded on the existence of an opening into the interior part of the tower, now blocked up, has long been disesteemed. In the volume by the Cambridge Camden Society, on the Churches in Cambridgeshire, it is said to have been made for an ecclesiastic to stand in, to ring the Sanctus bell. A round hole, lined with wood, in the roof of the niche, evidently intended for a bell-rope, and chafings upon the upper part of the little aperture, such as the friction of one would produce, are very convincive of its having been used for _some such_ purpose. But when we consider that the Sanctus bell, except when a hand one, was "suspended on the outside of the church, in a small turret over the archway leading from the nave into the chancel,"[5] the probability that it was made for the purpose above-mentioned seems very much weakened. I shall feel obliged for a reference to any other instance, or a more satisfactory explanation. [Footnote 5: Glossary of Architecture.] R. W. ELLIOT. _"Carmen Perpetuum," &c._--Upon the title-page of a Bible which I have had some years in my possession, I have just discovered, in my own handwriting, the following very beautiful and apposite quotation:-- "Carmen perpetuum primaque ab origine mundi ad tempora nostra." I have lost all remembrance of the source from which I borrowed this happy thought, so happily expressed; and shall feel much obliged to any one whose better memory can direct me to the mine from which I formerly dug the gem. HAM. "_The Retired Christian._"--Who was the author of _The Retired Christian_, so generally, but I believe erroneously, attributed to Bishop Ken? S. FY. _The Garrote._--The West India newspapers are filled with the details of General Lopez's second attempt on Cuba, and his subsequent capture and execution. The latter event took place at Havannah on the 1st September, in presence of 8000 troops, and the manner of it is said to have been the _Garrote_, which is thus described in a Jamaica Journal:-- "The prisoner is made to sit in a kind of chair with a high back, to which his head is fastened by means of an iron clasp, which encloses his neck, and is attached to the back by a screw. When the signal is given, the screw is turned several times, which strangles the victim, and breaks his neck."