I am confirm’d a woman can
  Love this, or that, or any other man: 
  This day she’s melting hot,
  To-morrow swears she knows you not;
  If she but a new object find,
  Then straight she’s of another mind;
    Then hang me, Ladies, at your door,
    If e’er I doat upon you more.

  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 Rechtsaltherthuemer, 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:—­