Chapter DEATH to Dee's Speculum of D by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Nearly 300 columns are occupied by the Abbreviœtiones Chronicorum of Ralph de Diceto, whose chronicles extend from 589 to 1148; and another chronicle brings the narrative down to 1199.

Decius, friend of Antinous .—Beaumont and Fletcher: Laws of Candy (printed 1647).

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (The), by Gibbon (1776).

Decree of Fontainebleau, an edict of Napoleon I., ordering the destruction by fire of all English goods (dated October 18, 1810, from Fontainebleau).

Decuman Gate, one of the four gates in a Roman camp. It was the gate opposite the prætorian, and furthest from the enemy. Called decuman because the tenth legion was always posted near it. The other two gates (the porta principalis dextra and the porta principalis sinistra) were on the other sides of the square. If the prœtorian gate was at the top of this page, the decuman gate would be at the bottom, the porta dextra on the right hand, and the porta sinistra on the left.

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 implicitly. Sir Leicester is honourable 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 Speculum, 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 Germaine, by whom it was given to John last duke of Argyll. The duke’s grandson (lord Frederick 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.)