As to civic robes, I can give no information and lay down no rules. The mayor of Carlisle is one of the few mayors who possess no robe, and I rather congratulate myself thereon. I was utterly unprepared for the gorgeous spectacle presented by my brother mayors at the Mansion House in 1882. Every variety of material, of colour, and of pattern was to be seen that the wildest imagination of the tailor could devise. Although the mayor of Carlisle has no gown, the unreformed corporation of Carlisle had them in the seventeenth century, as shown by the records of a Court Leet, held on Monday, October 22, 1649:-- “We order (that according to an ancient order) the Aldermen of this Citty shall attend the Maior upon every Lord’s day to the Church in their gounes, and likewise to attend the Maior in the Markett-place at or before the sermon bell to the Church, _sub pena_ vi_s_. viii_d_. _toties quoties_; and the Common Counsellmen to attend likewise, _sub pena_ 3s. 4d. _toties quoties_. “We order that the present bailiffes of this Cittie shall forthwith provide for either of them a decent gowne for the Honnor of this Cittie, _sub pena_.” The lateness of the hour warns me to stop. I daresay many of you think I have been but wasting the evening in gossip over trivial matters. “But,” as Mr. Thompson writes, in his “English Municipal History,”-- “The citizen of olden times looked upon the municipal insignia with a _political_ significance. When he saw the mace and sword, when he saw the banner of his community unfurled, his heart exulted at the thought that his fellow-citizens and he constituted a body enjoying entire independence, their own civil and criminal jurisdiction, and a name in the land which kings and lords respected.” The Name and Office of Port-Reeve. BY JAMES HURLY PRING, M.D. _PART II._ (_Continued from Vol. IV. p. 266._) The transference of the significance of words beyond the scope to which it was originally applied, is so obvious and generally recognised a fact, that I did not consider it necessary to insist more particularly upon it in my former paper. Many of your readers would doubtless be able to call to mind numerous examples of the kind, and, indeed, I did not credit any of them with being unacquainted with so common and notorious a fact, and one which suggests itself so readily in the instance of the word _port_ which was the word here specially under discussion.