Elizabeth treated Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, more generously than she did Shakspeare. The Queen gave him her glove, which, she having dropped it, he had picked up to return to her. He immediately adorned it with jewels, and placed it in his cap, where he displayed it at all jousts and tournaments. Chivalrous gentlemen at Donnybrook Fair follow something of this fashion when they draw a chalk line round their hat, and knock down every one bold enough to declare that it is not silver lace. Elizabeth, I may add, received as well as gave gloves. The first embroidered pair ever worn in England were presented to her by Vere, Earl of Oxford, when he returned from a mission abroad. The Queen had her portrait taken with the gloves introduced. And speaking of embassies, recalls to my memory another story connected with gloves and legations. Ambassadors’ effects are passed without examination,—not by law, but out of courtesy. This courtesy has made smuggleresses of many an envoy’s wife; of none more than of a French Ambassadress, not very many years ago, in England. She used to import huge cases of gloves under the name of “despatches,” and these she condescended to sell to English ladies who were mean enough to buy them. But the custom-house officers became tired of being accomplices in this contraband trade, and they put a stop to it by a very ingenious contrivance. Having duly ascertained that a case directed to the Embassy contained nothing but ladies’ gloves, they affected to treat it as a letter which had been sent through the Customs by mistake, and which they made over to the Post-office. The authorities of the latter delivered the same in due course; the postage-fee of something like £250 was paid without a remark; and the Ambassadress stopped all further correspondence of that sort by declining to deal any longer in gloves. But even the Customs get defeated occasionally, in spite of their cleverness. Some years ago a celebrated exporter of contraband goods, residing at Calais, sent on the same day, to two different parts of England, two cases of gloves, one containing gloves only for the right, the other case, gloves only for the left hand. The “left hands” got safely to their destination, but the “rights” were seized. The Customs however could find no purchaser at the usual sales for single gloves, but they were at last bought by an individual at the rate of a penny a dozen; this individual happened to be the possessor of the other single gloves, and he reaped a rich profit by the trick over the fair and honest dealer.