With regard to the last of the personages introduced by Shakspeare, Glo’ster, it may be observed that the title of Gloucester appears from its very beginning to have been appropriated to personages of unusually exalted birth. It commenced with a natural son of Henry I., and went through eleven earldoms to 1337. From that time we have only dukes; and Shakspeare evidently alludes to Humphry Plantagenet, youngest son of Henry IV., and therefore brother of Henry V., whom the poet, with strict regard to the rules of courtesy, makes the last to be named by the gallant king. With him the dukedom of Gloucester became extinct; but it was revived in 1461, and conferred on Richard, brother of Edward IV., commonly known as ‘Crookback.’ At his death at Bosworth in 1485, the title merged in the Crown; and the last who held it was the uncle of our present gracious Queen, William-Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh. Seeing that Shakspeare’s Glo’ster was the son of Henry IV., and that our present royal family trace their descent through all the previous sovereigns of England, we may conclude that while the ‘Bedford and Exeter’ and Salisbury of Agincourt fame have no representatives at the present day connected with them by any ties of sanguinity, yet that ‘Harry the King,’ ‘Warwick and Talbot’ and Glo’ster are so represented, and in the manner just intimated. FOOTNOTES: [1] This indicates that the barony mentioned is in abeyance, a term which will be explained afterwards. [2] It may interest some readers to be reminded that the widow of this earl, Selina, was the founder of the religious body known as ‘Lady Huntingdon’s Connection.’ [3] It may be instructive to the non-legal reader to be told that the word ‘issue’ in law signifies lineal descendants _ad infinitum_, and therefore has a more extensive signification than ‘children.’ The two terms are often confounded; but while of course ‘issue’ will include children, it may include more than children. BY MEAD AND STREAM. CHAPTER XXVIII.—‘THE LITTLE RIFT.’ Uncle Dick was for some time busy with his meal and with the details of the scare he had got in the morning.