CIVIC CONVIVIALITY IN 1759.--Mr. J. H. Round communicates the following: “The Mayor was also empowered [23 Nov. 1759] to give a grand Banquet at the ’Change to the Duke of Grafton and the officers of the Suffolk militia. The Suffolk militia then lay at Leicester, officered by the first characters in that county. It was then considered the most elegant and costly treat ever given by the corporation, and one the most inebriating. Mr. Mayor [Nicholas Throsby], at night, was assisted by the duke downstairs; and the duke soon after was assisted to his carriage by the town servants: there not being a soul left in the room capable of affording help to enfeebled limbs--Field Officers and Aldermen, Captains and Common Council, were perfectly at rest; all were levelled by the mighty power of wine.” (Throsby’s “History of Leicester” (1791), p. 162.) Reviews. _History and Description of Corfe Castle._ By THOMAS BOND. E. Stanford. 1884. WE have here a book to which we can conscientiously pay a high tribute of praise. The noble ruins of mediæval castles in which England is so pre-eminently rich have rarely found competent historians, for the reason that while, on the one hand, their architecture is a special study, and understood by only a very few, who have made it their own subject; on the other hand, those who have thus acquired the necessary general knowledge are too often lacking in the special local knowledge, which is, in such cases, absolutely essential. Mr. Bond, however, has unquestionably succeeded in combining these two qualifications. In the present work he gives us, in an enlarged and final form, the results of those valuable researches on the castle, of which the outline has previously appeared in the third edition of Hutchins’ “Dorset,” and in his paper read before the Archæological Institute in 1866. The chief point which Mr. Bond has throughout sought to establish is the early date of the actual keep, which, as he shows, may with good reason be assigned to the days of the Conqueror. In this last controversy the most important point is the locality of the “Castellum de Warham,” mentioned in “Domesday.” Mr. Bond identifies it, beyond the shadow of a doubt, with Corfe Castle itself. Mr. Freeman’s unfortunate attempt to defend his own identification of it with the later and infinitely less important fortress of Wareham Castle is utterly shattered by Mr. Bond’s arguments, though he does not, strangely enough, allude to Mr. Freeman’s contention, which will be found under “Wareham,” in his work on “English Towns and Districts.”