No one doubted more than a fractional part of this assertion, and Betterton, acting to the end under a continued fire of "_bravoes!_" may have thrown more than the original meaning into the phrase-- "That little word was worth all the sounds That ever I shall hear again!" Few were the words he was destined ever to hear again; and the subsequent prophecy of his own certain and proximate death, on which the curtain slowly descended, was fulfilled eight and forty hours after they were uttered. Such was the close of a career which had commenced fifty-one years before! Few other actors of eminence have kept the stage, with the public favour, for so extended a period, with the exception of Cave Underhill, Quin, Macklin, King, and in later times, Bartley and Cooper, most of whom at least accomplished their half century. The record of that career affords many a lesson and valuable suggestion to young actors, but I have to say a word previously of the Bettertons, before the brothers of that name, Thomas and the less known William, assumed the sock and buskin. Tothill Street, Westminster, is not at present a fine or a fragrant locality. It has a crapulous look and a villainous smell, and petty traders now huddle together where nobles once were largely housed. Thomas Betterton was born here, about the year 1634-5.[29] The street was then in its early decline, or one of King Charles's cooks could hardly have had home in it. Nevertheless, there still clung to it a considerable share of dignity. Even at that time there was a Tothill Fields House of Correction, whither vagabonds were sent, who used to earn scraps by scraping trenchers in the tents pitched in Petty France. All else in the immediate neighbourhood retained an air of pristine and very ancient nobility. I therefore take the father of Betterton, cook to King Charles, to have been a very good gentleman, in his way. He was certainly the sire of one, and the circumstance of the apprenticeship of young Thomas to a bookseller was no evidence to the contrary. In those days, it was the custom for greater men than the _chefs_ in the King's kitchen, namely, the bishops in the King's church, to apprentice their younger sons, at least, to trade, or to bequeath sums for that especial purpose. The last instance I can remember of this traditionary custom presents itself in the person, not indeed of a son of a bishop, but of the grandson of an archbishop, namely, of John Sharp, Archbishop of York from 1691 to 1714. He had influence enough with Queen Anne to prevent Swift from obtaining a bishopric. His son was Archdeacon of Northumberland, and of this archdeacon's sons one was Prebendary of Durham, while the other, the celebrated Granville Sharp, the "friend of the Negro," was apprenticed to a linen-draper, on Tower Hill. The early connection of Betterton, therefore, with Rhodes, the Charing Cross bookseller, is not to be accepted as a proof that his