The Emperor Aurelian’s wife once tried to coax out of her imperial husband a silk cloak--only one silk cloak. “No,” was the answer; “I could never think,” said that lord of the earth, “of buying such a thing; it sells for its weight in gold;” as we showed before, p. xix. Now, however, little does the woman of the nineteenth century suspect, when she goes forth pranked out in all her bravery of dress, that an Egyptian Cleopatra equally with a Roman empress would have looked with a grudging eye upon her gay silk gown and satin ribbons; or that, as late as three hundred years ago, even her silken hose would have been an offering worthy of an English queen’s (Elizabeth’s) acceptance. Little, too, does that tall young man who, as he stands behind the lady’s chariot going to a Drawing-room, ever and anon lets drop a stealthy but complaisant look upon his own legs shining in soft blushing silk--ah! little does he dream that in that old palace before him there once dwelt a king (James I.) of Great Britain, who would have envied him his bright new stockings; and who, before he came to the throne of England, was fain to wear some borrowed ones, when in Scotland he had to receive an English ambassador. If we take this loan, for the nonce, from the Earl of Mar to his royal master, to have been as shapeless and befrilled as are the yellow pair (Blue Coat School boys’ as yet) once Queen Elizabeth’s, now among the curiosities at Hatfield; then were those stockings--the first woven in England, and presented by Lord Hunsdon--funny things, indeed. Though so small a thing, there is in this collection a little cushion, No. 9047, p. 273, which bears in it much more than what shows itself at first, and is likely to awaken the curiosity of some who may have hereafter to write about the doings of our Court in the early part of the seventeenth century. This cushion is needle-wrought and figured all over with animals, armorial bearings, flowers, and love-knots, together with the letters I and R royally crowned with a strawberry leaf, and the strawberry fruit close by each of those capitals, as well as plentifully sprinkled all over the work.