The list of the Queen's Jubilee presents, given in the
morning papers of last Monday, contains a good many presents of interest, though not a few of that elaborately ornamental character where the amount of ornament seems adapted to crash into insig- nificance rather than to bring into relief the essence of the gift. Perhaps the happiest of the gifts from the outside world is that of the people of Stafford, who have sent the Queen a carved mahogany cabinet, the blue-velvet drawers of which are furnished with ladies' boots and shoes of exquisite workmanship. Suppos- ing the fit to be good,—as no doubt it is,—it must be a pleasure even to her Majesty to find herself suddenly provided with fur- lined boots for winter, with black-and:white satin slippers, with brown-and-amber corded slippers, besides walking and dress boots, all of the most finished beauty. You cannot well smother shoes and boots in ornament, and yet there is sufficient oppor- tunity in the making of shoes and boots to display a fine taste, and to indicate to the Queen that even what her foot treads upon, her subjects would wish her to find at once soft and shapely.
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