indebted to a most respectable, intelligent farmer in the adjoining
parish of Wasperton, in which parish Treen's elder brother lies
buried. The worthy farmer is unwilling to accept the large portion
of fame justly due to him for the services he has thus rendered to
literature in elucidating the history of Shakspeare and his times.
In possession of another agricultural gentleman there was recently a
very curious piece of iron, believed by many celebrated antiquaries
to have constituted a part of a knight's breast-plate. It was
purchased for two hundred pounds by the trustees of the British
Museum, among whom, the reader will be grieved to hear, it produced
dissension and coldness; several of them being of opinion that it
was merely a gorget, while others were inclined to the belief that
it was the forepart of a horse-shoe. The Committee of Taste and the
Heads of the Archaeological Society were consulted. These learned,
dispassionate, and benevolent men had the satisfaction of
conciliating the parties at variance,--each having yielded somewhat
and every member signing, and affixing his seal to the signature,
that, if indeed it be the forepart of a horse-shoe, it was probably
Ismael's,--there being a curved indentation along it, resembling the
first letter of his name, and there being no certainty or record
that he died in France, or was left in that country by Sir Magnus.

The Editor is unable to render adequate thanks to the Rev. Stephen
Turnover for the gratification he received in his curious library by
a sight of Joseph Carnaby's name at full length, in red ink, coming
from a trumpet in the mouth of an angel. This invaluable document
is upon an engraving in a frontispiece to the New Testament. But
since unhappily he could procure no signature of Hannah Hathaway,
nor of her mother, and only a questionable one of Mr. John
Shakspeare, the poet's father,--there being two, in two very