The article of _braccæ_ is suggestive of _buttons_; and touching these, I may observe that there is a curious law extant with regard to them. It is, by Acts of Parliament passed in three reigns,—William III., Anne, and George I.,—perfectly illegal for tailor to make, or mortal man to wear, clothes with any other buttons appended thereto but buttons of brass. This law is in force for the benefit of the Birmingham makers; and it further enacts, not only that he who makes or sells garments with any but brass buttons thereto affixed, shall pay a penalty of forty shillings for every dozen, but that he shall not be able to recover the price he claims, if the wearer thinks proper to resist payment. Nor is the Act a dead letter. It is not many weeks since, that honest Mr. Shirley sued plain Mr. King for nine pounds sterling, due for a suit of clothes. King pleaded non-liability on the ground of an illegal transaction, the buttons on the garment supplied having been made of cloth, or bone covered with cloth, instead of gay and glittering brass, as the law directs. The judge allowed the plea; and the defendant having thus gained a double suit without cost, immediately proceeded against the defendant to recover his share of the forty shillings for every dozen buttons which the poor tailor had unwittingly supplied. A remarkable feature in the case was, that the judge who admitted the plea, the barrister who set it up, and the client who profited by it, were themselves all buttoned contrary to law! If I were writing an Encyclopædia of Trades, I would be as elaborate as Dryasdust on the manufacture of buttons of all sorts of metal, more or less costly; of wood, bone, ivory, horn, leather, paper, glass, silk, wool, cotton, linen, thread, flock, compressed clay, etc. etc.—so that both my readers and myself have a lucky escape. As the age however is statistical in its inclinations, I will save my credit by remarking that at Birmingham, the chief seat of button-manufacture, there are not less than five thousand persons engaged in the manufacture of buttons, and that half this number consists of women, and children. Having said this, I turn to a new chapter, wherein there will be something more of statistics, and something new about stockings. STOCKINGS. “Troth, Master Inkpen, thou hast put thy foot Into a pretty subject.”—OLD PLAY.