It will be remembered that St. Gudule had the faculty of being able, when her candle was extinguished, to blow it in again. Many among us enjoy the same faculty, and schoolboys often practise the miracle,—the only one ever performed by St. Gudule. It is said however that when the saint prayed, barefooted, in church, the attendant priest, moved by compassion, put his gloves under her feet. They immediately rose, and hung in the air for a whole hour;—but what that proves, I really do not know. But we have had gloves suspended in our own churches. When Bernard Gilpin was preaching in the North of England, he observed, on entering one of the churches there, a glove suspended from the roof; and having learned that it was a challenge placed there by a Borderer, in defiance of some other Borderer, he tore it down, to the great disgust of the sexton, who had a respect for established usages, even though the devil had invented them. Good Bernard Gilpin gave a challenge of his own from the pulpit: he flung down the Gospel before the rather angry people, who were highly civilized, and therefore averse to innovation; and he told them so defiantly of the difficulties in the way of their salvation, that they determined to surmount them and became a Christian people; and _that_, under correction, is a better glove, and a greater miracle, than those of St. Gudule. I have spoken, in another page, of our old English custom of kissing. It is one which is not likely to decay. We still kiss persons caught napping,—that is, if they be worth the kissing,—and exact as forfeit the price of a new pair of gloves. In old days, he who first saw the new moon could, by kissing a maiden, and proclaiming the fact,—that is, the lunar fact,—claim a pair of gloves for his service. The Persian habit was to kiss only relatives, which must have been highly proper, but uncommonly insipid,—a perfect waste of good things, except among cousins. Our Queen Elizabeth was a wearer of gloves that are said to have been of a very costly description. Shakspeare was once acting in her presence the part of a king—one of his own making; and so careful was he of the illusion of the scene, that he forgot all other things beside. The Virgin Queen resolved to put him to the proof; and as the mimic king passed before her, she dropped one of her gloves. Shakspeare, faithful subject as well as actor, immediately paused, and with the words that, “although bent on this high embassy, yet stoop we to pick up our cousin’s glove,” he presented it to the real queen, and then passed on. This anecdote is often cited to prove that nothing could induce the poet-actor to depart from the business of the stage; and it proves exactly the contrary; but as an illustration of gloves I have found it handy to my purpose.