in commemoration of being delivered from plagues, of which such states
of disease were concomitant signs.

TREBOR.

* * * * *

_Military Execution_ (No. 16. p. 246.).--Your correspondent "MELANION"
is informed that the anecdote refers to Murat, and the author of the
sentiment is Lord Byron. See _Byron's Poems_, Murray's edit. 1 vol.
8vo. p. 561., note 4.

C.

* * * * *

"_M. or N._" (No. 26. p. 415.)--I do not think that "M. or N." are
used as the initials of any particular words; they are the middle
letters of the alphabet, and, at the time the Prayer Book was
compiled, it seems to have been the fashion to employ them in the way
in which we now use the first two. There are only two offices, the
Catechism and the Solemnisation of Matrimony, in which more than one
letter is used. In the former, the answer to the first question has
always stood "N. or M." In the office of Matrimony, however, in Edward
the Sixth's Prayer Books, both the man and woman are designated by
the letter N--"I, N., take thee, N., to my wedded wife;" whilst in
our present book M. is applied to the man and N. to the woman. The
adoption of one letter, and the subsequent substitution of another, in
this service, evidently for the sake of a more clear distinction only,
sufficiently shows that no particular name or word was intended by