Yet still I'll love the fairsome (why?-- For nothing but to please my eye); And so the fat and soft-skinned dame I'll flatter to appease my flame; For she that's musical I'll long, When I am sad, to sing a song; Then hang me, Ladies, at your door, If e'er I doat upon you more. I'll give my fancy leave to range Through every where to find out change; The black, the brown, the fair shall be But objects of variety. I'll court you all to serve my turn, But with such flames as shall not burn; Then hang me, Ladies, at your door, If e'er I doat upon you more. A.D. * * * * * WHITE GLOVES AT A MAIDEN ASSIZE. The practice of giving white gloves to judges at maiden assizes is one of the few relics of that symbolism so observable in the early laws of this as of all other countries; and its origin is doubtless to be found in the fact of the hand being, in the early Germanic law, a symbol of power. By the hand property was delivered over or reclaimed, hand joined in hand to strike a bargain and to celebrate espousals, &c. That this symbolism should sometimes be transferred from the hand to the glove (the _hand-schuh_ of the Germans) is but natural, and it is in this transfer that we shall find the origin of the white gloves in question. At a maiden assize no criminal has been called upon to plead, or to use the words of Blackstone, "called upon by name to hold up his hand;" in short, no guilty hand has been held up, and, therefore, after the rising of the court our judges (instead of receiving, as they did in Germany, an entertainment at which the bread, the glasses, the food, the linen--every thing, in short--was white) have been accustomed to receive a pair of white gloves. The Spaniards have a proverb, "_white hands never offend_;" but in their gallantry they use it only in reference to the softer sex; the Teutonic races, however, would seem to have embodied the idea, and to have extended its application. WILLIAM J. THOMS. A LIMB OF THE LAW, to a portion of whose Query, in No. 2. (p. 29.), the above is intended as a reply, may consult, on the symbolism of the Hand and Glove, _Grimm Deutsches Rechtsaltherthümer_, pp. 137. and 152, and on the symbolical use of white in judicial proceedings, and the after feastings consequent thereon, pp. 137. 381. and 869. of the same learned work. [On this subject we have received a communication from F.G.S., referring to Brand's _Popular Antiquities_, vol. ii. p. 79, ed. 1841, for a passage from Fuller's _Mixed Contemplations_, London, 1660, which proves the existence of the practice at the time; and to another in Clavell's _Recantation of an Ill-led Life_, London, 1634, to show that prisoners, who received pardon after condemnation, were accustomed to present gloves to the judges:-- "Those pardoned men who taste their prince's loves, (As married to new life) do give you gloves."]