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, etc. 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 ori…