The above extract will probably suffice to show the true state of the
case, and for information on similar points I would refer your readers
to the work from which the above extract is taken, and also to that on
_The English Language_, by the same author.

T. C.

* * * * *

REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES.

_Swords worn in public_ (Vol. i., p. 415.; vol. ii. p. 110.).--I am
surprised that the curious topic suggested by the Query of J.D.A. has
not been more satisfactorily answered. Wedsecuarf's reply (Vol. ii., p.
110.) is short, and not quite exact. He says that "Swords ceased to be
worn as an article of dress through the influence of Beau Nash, and were
consequently first out of fashion at Bath;" and he quotes the authority
of Sir Lucius O'Trigger as to "wearing no swords _there_." Now, it is, I
believe, true that Nash endeavoured to discountenance the wearing swords
at Bath; but it is certain that they were commonly worn twenty or thirty
years later.

Sir Lucius O'Trigger talks of Bath in 1774, near twenty years after
Nash's reign, and, even at that time, only says that swords were "not
worn _there_"--implying that they were worn elsewhere; and we know that
Sheridan's own duel at Bath was a rencontre, he and his adversary,
Mathews, both wearing swords. I remember my father's swords hung up in
his dressing-room, and his telling me that he had worn a sword, even in
the streets, so late as about 1779 or 1780. In a set of characteristic
sketches of eminent persons about the year 1782, several wear swords;