of these things, said the old writers: "as a
favour of a mistress, the memorial of a friend,
and as a mark to be challenged by an enemy."
As a favour of a mistress it was always a popular
donation. When Queen Elizabeth, that rampant
old coquette, gave her dropped glove to the Earl
of Cumberland who picked it up, that benighted
individual set it round witli diamonds and stuck
it in his hat as the greatest, and highest, and
richest, and royalest favour man could show;
and Shakespeare, and the other dramatists of his
date, speak of gloves worn in the cap as
ordinary evidence of a lady's favour and a knight's
deserving. In Troilus and Cressida, Troilus
gives the lady a sleeve and she gives him a glove;
and Helen is made to swear "by Venus' glove,"
which we should not in our days think quite
sufficiently true to the local colour of Olympus;
besides many other passages where gloves are
spoken of as favours, as well as for an oath;
"by gloves" occurring as often as by Jove, or
by George, in modern mouths.

Little Pigmeus weares his mistris glove,
Her ring and feather (favours of her love),
Who could but laugh to see the little dwarfe
Grace out himself with her imbrodered scarfe?
Tis strange, yet true, her glove, ring, scarfe, and
fan,
Makes him (unhansome) a well-favour'd man.

This was an epigram written in the House of
Correction by one T. H.; and it is to be hoped
that the unhappy little Pigmeus, whoever he
was, did not lose his appetite when he read it.
A much more beautiful conceit is that of Wyat,
in that exquisite little bit of his, called:

TO HIS LOVE FROM WHOM HE HAD HER GLOVES.

What nedes these threatning wordes, and wasted
winde?
Al this cannot make me restore my pray.
To robbe your good, ywis is not my mynde;
Nor causelesse your fair hande did I display.
Let love be judge, or els whom next we finde,
That may both heare what you and I can say.
She reft my hart, and I a glove from her;
Let us se then, if one be worth the other.

Where is the modern lover who would balance
the worth of his heart against a soiled glove,
even if only six and a quarter, by Jouvin or
Houbigant? All! the olden times were younger
in some things; in none more so than in the
unsuspecting intensity of their love, and the loyalty
with which they gave up body and soul to the
beloved! There was a very pretty invention of
old times, called Draw-Gloves—pretty, that is, in
its consequences, for no one knows exactly what
draw-gloves means, or how it was played. Halliwell,
in his dictionary, calls it talking with the
fingers, but it was scarcely that; and others
make it out to have been a kind of mora, but
it was scarcely that either; whatever it was,
however, the mode of playing, and the results
of the game, were gracious and enticing; according
to rich and winey Herrick's exposition in his
Pleasant Grove of New Fancies, when he says:

At Draw-Gloves we'll play,
And preethee let's lay
A wager, and let it be this:
Who first to the summe
Of twenty doth come
Shall have for his winning a kiss.

Was this the origin of "winning gloves" by
kissing in the sleep? In the absence of all
knowledge on the subject, one guess is as good
as another, and draw-gloves may have been a
delicious bit of feigning with its full completion
in this. There was a pleasant custom, too,
connected with the new moon, and gloves, and
kissing, that deserves a word. In some country
places it was—perhaps is—the custom for a
number of young people to assemble together, to
watch for the new moon, when whoever saw it
first gave his or her neighbour a kiss, and got a
pair of gloves as the reward.

The perfection of a modern glove is its smoothness
and elasticity, its unexceptionable fit, the
delicacy and uniformity of its tint, and a sewing
that shall be at once fine and strong: while
anything like embroidery or adventitious ornament,
or mixture of colours, or incongruous materials,
does not count as the best taste in these modern
days of luxury and utility combined. But in
olden times gloves were often exceedingly costly.
That story of Cœur de Lion being discovered on
his fateful journey by the jewelled gloves which
hung at his page's girdle, shows how magnificently
they were sometimes adorned; while even
Holy Mother Church did not disdain the use of
these mundane vanities for her reverend hands,
the gloves of all the prelates of England being
bedecked with precious stones as parts of
ordinary prelatical pomp and useful glory. In
the beginning of the ninth century they were
even legislated on; and in the time of Louis le
Debonnaire the Council of Aix ordered all godly
monks to wear sheepskin gloves only. The
embroidered glove was purely episcopal, like the ring
and sandals; and when some abbots in France
presumed to wear them, the Council of Poitiers
sharply reproved them for insolence and encroachment.
Later, we find them more universal, and
by no means so ruinously expensive, though still
costly enough, considering the comparative value
of money; witness the bill of moneys spent for
Peter Martyr and Bernadino Ochin, when they
came over here to delight the souls of the
Reformers by their godly zeal, where we find
9s. 3d. for Bernadino's "hatt and glovys;" 13s.
for "a payre of furred glovys for P. Marter,"
£1 11s. 3d. "for a peticote, glovys, and nightcap
cap for Julius," and Is. for " 2 payer of glovys"
for them. In Henry the Eighth's time, the
churchwardens of Kingston-upon-Thames paid
threepence for "two payre of glovys for Robyn
Hood and Mayde Maryan," the morris-dancers
employed by the parish. Which was pretty well
of the parish, and showed a decent spirit.

Gloves, too, were used in witchcraft, as when
Joan and Philip Flower stroked the cat Rutter's
back with Lord Henry's gloves, saying "Mount
Rutter and fly;" and Rutter mewed but did not
fly, though Lord Henry fell sick unto death.
Then there is the story of the lady who threw
her glove into the arena where the lion stood,