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174 pairs of "white tabby from the same taylor." Fancy asking a foreign minister to purchase one's stays, and wrappers, and little daughter's petticoats, and to please wait his opportunity to smuggle them in without duty!

Yet "Queen Sarah" was capable of sudden deeds of generosity that quite take away our breath by their magnificence, and so, for the matter of that, was another noble termagant, Queen Elizabeth, who gave away right royally with one hand, even while she held out the other for beggarly gratuities. We see her heaping riches into Sir Walter Raleigh's lap, and managing to get a great deal of it back again, when his treasure-laden ships came slowly to port. Nay, did she not seize on "a waistcoat of carnation colour, curiously embroidered," which the brave navigator, always passionately addicted to fine clothes, had snatched from some Spanish galleon for the adornment of his own handsome figure, and which the queen straightway proceeded to flaunt as a stomacher before his injured eyes? If we read a list of Elizabeth's New Year gifts, we are both astonished and edified by their number and variety. Here is Fulke Greville