"Next came the Queen, in her sixty-fifth year, as we were told, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, but black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar). She had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops.[[2]] She wore false hair, and that red."

Then comes the passage to which I beg to call especial attention, and on which I have to invite some information:

"Upon her head a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Luneburg table."

What was this table? The work from which I quote (Recollections of Royalty, vol. ii. p. 119.) has a note hereon, merely remarking that, "at this distance of time, it is difficult to say what this was." If, anything, however, can be gleaned on the subject, some of the readers of "N. & Q." in some one of the "five quarters" of the world will assuredly be able to answer this Query.

J. J. S.

Middle Temple.

P.S.—Since the above was written, I find that Elizabeth's christening gift from the Duchess of Norfolk was a cup of gold, fretted with pearls; that noble lady being (says Miss Strickland) "completely unconscious of the chemical antipathy between the acidity of wine and the misplaced pearls." Elizabeth seems thus to have been rich in those gems from her infancy upwards, and to have retained a passionate taste for them long after their appropriateness as ornaments for her had ceased.

Footnote 2: [(return)]

With respect to the rich pearl earrings above mentioned, it may not be uninteresting to remark, that Elizabeth seems to have been particularly fond of pearls, and to have possessed the same taste for them from youth to even a later period than "her sixty-fifth year." The now faded wax-work effigy preserved in Westminster Abbey (and which lay on her coffin, arrayed in royal robes, at her funeral, and caused, as Stowe states, "such a general sighing, groaning, and weeping, as the like hath not being seen or known in the memory of man") exhibits large round Roman pearls in the stomacher; a carcanet of large round pearls, &c. about her throat; her neck ornamented with long strings of pearls; her high-heeled shoe-bows having in the centre large pearl medallions. Her earrings are circular pearl and ruby medallions, with large pear-shaped pearl pendants. This, of course, represents her as she dressed towards the close of her life. In the Tollemache collection at Ham House is a miniature of her, however, when about twenty, which shows the same taste as existing at that age. She is here depicted in a black dress, trimmed with a double row of pearls. Her point-lace ruffles are looped with pearls, &c. Her head-dress is decorated in front with a jewel set with pearls, from which three pear-shaped pearls depend. And, finally, she has large pearl-tassel earrings. In the Henham Hall portrait (engraved in vol. vii. of Miss Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England), the ruff is confined by a collar of pearls, rubies, &c., set in a gold filagree pattern, with large pear shaped pearls depending from each lozenge. The sleeves are ornamented with rouleaus, wreathed with pearls and bullion. The lappets of her head-dress also are adorned at every "crossing" with a large round pearl. Her gloves, moreover, were always of white kid, richly embroidered with pearls, &c. on the backs of the hands. A poet of that day asserts even that, at the funeral procession, when the royal corpse was rowed from Richmond, to lie in state at Whitehall,—

"Fish wept their eyes of pearl quite out,

And swam blind after,"

doubtless intending, most loyally, to provide the departed sovereign with a fresh and posthumous supply of her favorite gems!