the blood performs a most important service in
the maintenance of life. As everybody knows,
it is the oxygenation of the blood which vitalises
it; but comparatively few know that the oxygen
floats in the living or arterial blood upon filmy
floats of iron. Thus, literally, life floats on iron
ships. Moreover, no one needs reminding that
Daguerre and Talbot have based a most delightful
art upon the action of light on silver in solution.
By M. Devincergi's process, a design can
be put upon a zinc plate by photography, instead
of being copied by an artist. Mercury and
silver have, it is affirmed, been extracted from
patients placed in baths and subjected to the
action of artificial electricity, although it is
difficult to imagine how this could be done without
extracting simultaneously iron from the
blood. Now, remembering all these discoveries
and inventions, and considering Fusinieri's gold
circles on his silver plate, may not the metallic
number forty-four, the horse-shoe, and the gold
coins, have been marked upon the skins of the
sailors by the fused metals volatilised in the
lightning? The pictures of the trees and the
flower might equally be due to the metals fused
in the lightning leaving behind them, on the
bodies passed through, representations of their
outline, just as the circular layers of gold
represented the gold ball.

GLOVES.

THE old proverb goes, that for a glove to be
well made, three nations must have a hand in it:
Spain must dress the leather, France cut the
shape, and England sew the seams. At the
present time, France has the monopoly, at least in
reputation; for not even the best Spanish kid
would be preferred to the rat-skins of Paris,
nor can the stoutest English sewing compete
for favour—we will not speak of excellence—
with those slender, easily loosened stitches of
French needles, so sure to give way at the ball
of the thumb, and in the three cornered
joinings of the fingers. Though, indeed, the French
glove sewers use a machine invented by an
Englishman, which should secure the wearer
against all such mishaps as flying ends and ripped
seams; only it does not. But for all their
shortcomings, French gloves are unapproachable, even
in these days of general commerce and awakened
wits, when everybody imitates everybody, and
there is no special art left to any one; and
neither Cordova nor Dent can give us such
well-cut, well-fitting, well-looking, and desirable
"hand shoes," as those delicately tinted marvels
to be found on the Boulevards of the Circe of
modern cities.

Gloves are very different now to what they used
to be, say in Queen Elizabeth's time, when they
were perfumed—then called Frangipanni gloves,
from the Italian marquis of the same name, who
first invented that delicate art, as well as the
special perfume employed; but later the scent was
called here the Earl of Oxford's perfume, from its
English chaperon and introducer. And not only
perfumed, but lined and quilted, and "trimmed
with four tufts or roses of coloured silk," were
the Elizabethan gloves; as we find in the description
of that royal lady's hand shoes. Perfumed
gloves are said by some old writers to have been
first brought into England by that same consummate
coxcomb and fop, Edward de Vere, Earl of
Oxford, When he came back from his self-appointed
exile in Italy, in the fifteenth year of Elizabeth's
reign, laden with sweet scents and nick-nacks
and man-millinery of all descriptions; and it is
said, too, that the earl presented her majesty
with her first pair—among other things, new,
costly, and curious. A gift so pleasing to
gracious majesty, that she insisted on being
pictured witli them on her hands. For Elizabeth,
though a mighty queen and tolerable ruler
enough, was a villanously bad artist, and understood
no more of the harmonies than a modern
Choctaw. But if perfumed or Frangipanni
gloves were first brought in by the Earl of
Oxford, what, then, was "the payer of sweete
gloves, lined with white vellat, each glove
trimmed with 8 buttons, and 8 small aigletts
of gold enamelled," mentioned in Henry the
Eighth's secret inventory of his wardrobe at
Hampton Court? If these were not Frangipanni
gloves, they were very like them.

Those "sweete gloves" were dangerous
sometimes. At a time when poisons were so subtle
that they could be conveyed in any medium
whatsoever—food or clothing indiscriminately—
and when gifts of gloves, perfumed delicately,
were common among friends—and enemies—
sweet-scented hand shoes were as fit instruments
of death as anything else; and, unless history
belies her, Catherine de Medicis knew the value
of them on more than one occasion. Ruddy-
cheeked apples or Frangipanni gloves, it was all
one; for what matters it to us of what metal the
type is cast which prints the word Finis across
the page? It was so easy, too, to give the
death-blow under the guise of friendliness; for
nothing was more common in the way of present-
making than gloves, perfumed or not. Ann,
Countess of Pembroke, that heroine of stately
biography, was great in this. She was always
taking her friends into her chamber after dinner,
to kiss them and give them new gloves. "My
cousin Thomas Sandford's wife of Askham and
her second son" one day dined with her.
After dinner she kissed the wife, and took the
son by the hand, gave to her a pair of
buckskin gloves, and to him five shillings, which
doubtless he appreciated more. At another
time she kissed the women of Mr. Thomas
Burbeck and Mr. Cotterick, gave ten shillings
to some, and a pair of buckskin gloves to Mr.
Carleton; once, also, a pair of "buckskin
gloves that came from Kendal," to a Mrs.
Winch, of Settra Park. Royalty, too, used to
make the same gifts; only something costlier.
At the Earl of Arran's sale, in 1759, a pair of
gloves, given by Henry the Eighth to Sir
Anthony Denny, sold for £38 17s.; a pair given by
James the First to his son, Edward Denny, sold
for £22 4s.; and a pair of mittens, given by