Most royal families have a given name they employ as a sort
of distinctive dynastic hallmark. George and Frederick are
distinctively Hanoverian, as Edward is distinctively English.
The late king selected Edward rather than Albert from motives
at once filial and politic. He desired that his father should
stand alone in his glory as Albert in English history, and
Edward was associated with old and stately traditions of the
Plantagenets and Tudors. Similarly the French Bourbons usually
have a Louis or a Charles among their string of names, and the
Bonapartes never forget Napoleon at the baptismal font. The
most striking instance of reverence for a dynastic name is
found in the princely family of Reuss, in Germany. There are
two principalities of Reuss, respectively representing the
elder and the younger lines. Every reigning prince must bear
the name of Henry. Henry XXIV reigns over one principality, and
Henry XIV over the other. All the heads of the houses for nine
hundred years have been Henrys, and in a grand family council
early in the eighteenth century it was decreed that the figures
should not exceed one hundred, after which a new series should
begin with Henry I. As both branches clung to Henry a working
arrangement was patched up by which the younger line begins a
new group-numbering with each century. The first Henry born
in the twentieth century who shall mount the tiny throne must
revert to Henry I, and similarly his descendant senior among
the Henrys of the twenty-first century is foreordained to be I,
too.--Boston _Transcript_.
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E
=Early Conditions in America=--See POVERTY, EARLY, OF UNITED STATES.