DECEM SCRIPTORES, a collection of ten ancient chronicles on English history, edited by Twysden and John Selden.  The names of the chroniclers are Simeon of Durham, John of Hexham, Richard of Hexham, Ailred of Rieval, Ralph De Diceto, John Brompton of Jorval, Gervase of Canterbury, Thomas Stubbs, William Thorn of Canterbury, and Henry Knighton of Leicester.

DECEMBER.  A mother laments in the

  “Darkest of all Decembers
  Ever her life has known,”

the death of two sons, one of whom fell in battle, while the other perished at sea.

  “Ah, faint heart! in thy anguish
  What is there left to thee? 
  Only the sea intoning
  Only the wainscot-mouse
  Only the wild wind moaning
  Over the lonely house!”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Poems, (1882).

DE’CIUS, friend of Antin’ous (4 syl.).—­Beaumont and Fletcher, Laws of Candy (1647).

DEDLOCK (Sir Leicester), bart., who has a general opinion that the world might get on without hills, but would be “totally done up” without Dedlocks.  He loves Lady Dedlock, and believes in her implicity.  Sir Leicester is honorable and truthful, but intensely prejudiced, immovably obstinate, and proud as “county” can make a man; but his pride has a most dreadful fall when the guilt of Lady Dedlock becomes known.

Lady Dedlock, wife of Sir Leicester, beautiful, cold, and apparently heartless; but she is weighed down with this terrible secret, that before marriage she had had a daughter by Captain Hawdon.  This daughter’s name is Esther [Summerson] the heroine of the novel.

Volumnia Dedlock, cousin of Sir Leicester.  A “young” lady of 60, given to rouge, pearl-powder, and cosmetics.  She has a habit of prying into the concerns of others.—­C.  Dickens, Bleak House (1853).

DEE’S SPEC’ULUM, a mirror, which Dr. John Dee asserted was brought to him by the angels Raphael and Gabriel.  At the death of the doctor it passed into the possession of the Earl of Peterborough, at Drayton; then to Lady Betty Grermaine, by whom it was given to John, last duke of Argyll.  The duke’s grandson (Lord Frederic Campbell) gave it to Horace Walpole; and in 1842 it was sold, at the dispersion of the curiosities of Strawberry Hill, and bought by Mr. Smythe Pigott.  At the sale of Mr. Pigott’s library, in 1853, it passed into the possession of the late Lord Londesborough.  A writer in Notes and Queries (p. 376, November 7, 1874) says, it “has now been for many years in the British Museum,” where he saw it “some eighteen years ago.”

This magic speculum is a flat polished mineral, like cannel coal, of a circular form, fitted with a handle.

DEERSLAYER (The), the title of a novel by J.F.  Cooper, and the nickname of its hero, Natty or Nathaniel Bumppo.  He is a model uncivilized man, honorable, truthful, and brave, pure of heart and without reproach.