ordinary or judge of that place; the king ought also to send a glove as a sign of his consent to the same." The glove, therefore, was the king's glove, the earliest form of royal charter, the original sign-manual. Among other items of folk-lore connected with this useful article of dress, we may mention that the term "right as my glove" is a phrase, according to Sir Walter Scott, derived from the practice of pledging the glove as the sign of irrefragable faith. Gloves, too, were in olden times fashionable new year's gifts, having been far more expensive than now-a-days. When Sir Thomas More was Lord Chancellor, he happened to determine a case in favour of a lady named Croaker, who, as a mark of her gratitude, sent him a new year's gift in the shape of a pair of gloves with forty angels in them. But Sir Thomas returned the money with the following letter:--"Mistress, since it were against good manners to refuse your new year's gift, I am content to take your gloves, but as for the lining I utterly refuse it." In the time of Queen Elizabeth, the rural bridegroom wore gloves in his hat as a sign of good husbandry; and on the "Border" to bite the glove was considered a pledge of deadly vengeance, in allusion to which Sir Walter Scott, in his "Lay of the Last Minstrel," says:-- "Stern Rutherford right little said, But bit his glove and shook his head." The ring, apart from its eventful history, has from the most remote period been surrounded, both in this and other countries, not only with a most extensive legendary lore, but with a vast array of superstitions, a detailed account of which would be impossible in a small volume like the present one; so we must confine ourselves to some of the most popular. In the first place, then, certain mysterious virtues have been supposed to reside in rings, not so much on account of their shape as from the materials of which they have been composed. Thus, they have been much worn as talismans or charms, being thought to be infallible preservatives against unseen dangers of every kind. Referring to some of these, we find, for instance, that the turquoise ring was believed to possess special properties, a superstition to which Dr. Donne alludes:-- "A compassionate turquoise, that doth tell, By looking pale, the wearer is not well." Fenton, too, in his "Secret Wonders of Nature," describes the stone:--"The turkeys doth move when there is any peril prepared to him that weareth it." The turquoise ring of Shylock, which, we are told in the _Merchant of Venice_ (Act iii., sc. 1), he would not part with for a "wilderness of monkeys," was, no doubt, valued for its secret virtues. The carbuncle, again, amongst other properties, was said to give out a natural light, to which it has been supposed Shakespeare alludes in _Titus Andronicus_ (Act ii., sc. 3), where, speaking of the ring on the finger of Bassianus, he says:--