“Charles Plowden travelled with Mr. Middleton; and when at Rome, he called with Mr. Thorpe to see me at the English college.  We walked together for some time in St. George’s Hall, and he quite scandalised me with the manner in which he spoke of Ganganelli.  There is no doubt that Mr. Plowden had a principal hand in the Life of Ganganelli, which was published in London in 1785.  Father Thorpe supplied the materials (J.T. is subscribed to the letters printed), and Mr. Plowden arranged them.  I brought a packet of letters from Mr. Thorpe to Mr. C. Plowden, and one or two other packets were brought from him to Mr. Plowden by other students.  ‘The contents were so scandalous,’ said Bishop Milner in my hearing, at Oscott, ’that Mr. Weld, with whom Mr. C. Plowden lived, insisted on the work being suppressed.’  The copies were all bought up, and I have never seen or heard of a copy since I saw it in Coghlan’s shop in 1785.  Mr. Cordell, of Newcastle, wrote some observations upon it.  Mr. Conolly, S.J., told me at Oxford, October 17, 1814, that he ’once saw in a corner of Mr. C. Plowden’s room, a heap of papers, some torn, and put there apparently to be burnt.  I took up one of them,’ he said, ‘which was torn in two.’  It contained anecdotes and observations against Ganganelli.”

It was doubtless from this collection that Mr. Keon was supplied with those papers, which he published in Dolman’s Magazine in 1846, concerning “The Preservation of the Society of Jesus in the Empire of Russia.”

M.A.  TIERNEY.

Arundel.

Pope Ganganelli (Vol. ii., p. 464.).—­The Rev. Charles Cordell, a priest of the Roman Catholic Church, who was stationed at Newcastle-upon-Tyne about the date mentioned by your correspondent CEPHAS (he was there in 1787), was the translator of the letters of Pope Clement XIV. (Ganganelli); but as I have not the book, I do not know whether it contained also a life of that pontiff.  Mr. Cordell was editor of other works.

W.S.G.

Nicholas Ferrar’s Digest (Vol. ii., p.446.).—­One of the copies of the Gidding Digest of the History of our Saviour’s Life, inquired after by J.H.M. (a most beautiful book), is in the library of the Marquis of Salisbury.  I believe it to be the copy presented to Charles I.

W.H.C.

Ferrar, Nicholas.—­The following extract from a very interesting paper on “Illustrated Books” in the Quarterly Review, vol. lxxiv. p. 173, will aid J.H.M. in his researches after the curious volumes arranged by the members of the Ferrar family: