Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/163

 dance. This over, they fell to on the feast, with a will, being waited on by the chief dames of the villages.

Finally, on the wedding-night—which is the fourth night after the wedding—all the friends of the bridal pair visit them as they lie in the nuptial couch. Each visitor brings a bowl of milk soup; and poor Jacques and Nannine must, bongré malgré, receive from every one a spoonful of that beverage. The young girls who thus visit the bridal chamber, secure the pins which have been used in the fastening of Nannine's shawl and gown, as a charm to bring them husbands.

PRECIOUS STONES.

contingencies prevent your going to Corinth, you content your craving with a panorama of Corinth. If your poverty, but not your will, compel your remaining outside a travelling managerie, you may still have the pleasure of admiring the pictures. When you cannot enter a sweet-smelling cookshop, no law prevents your looking in at the window and sniffing the odours that exhale from below. And if you can't pick up diamonds like Sindbad the Sailor, nor incrust yourself with them like Prince Esterhazy, we advise you not to take the matter to heart, but to console yourself by contemplating them at a distance.

The Cook's Oracle, the Almanac des Gourmands, and Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du Goût, have served a series of Barmecide feasts to many a compulsory abstainer. In like manner, those who cannot measure pearls by the pint, nor mark points at whist with unset brilliants, may gratify their tastes for gems by the instructive and interesting Natural History of Precious Stones and of the Precious Metals, which Mr. King has given to the world.

Doubtless, jewels are best beheld in situ; the situs, however, being neither the mine nor the matrix, but in their proper place, about some fair personage—which gives you the chance of admiring two beautiful things at once. A drawback is that family diamonds, like family titles, often fall to the lot of the oldest. Moreover, etiquette forbids young ladies to wear much jewellery, diamonds being especially tabooed. Nevertheless, wherever it may be, a good diamond necklace is a pretty thing to look at.

Independent of its surpassing beauty, the diamond strikes the imagination by its value. The re-cutting merely of the Koh-i-noor is said to have cost eight thousand pounds. Other grand diamonds have required a proportional outlay to bring out their intrinsic qualities. Even humble stones make good their claim to attention, and will not be passed by unobserved. In 1664, Mr. Edward Browne wrote to his father, Sir Thomas: "March 2. I went to Mr. Foxe's chamber in Arundell House, where I saw a great many pretty pictures and things cast in brasse, some limmings, divers pretious stones, and one diamond valued at eleven hundred pound."

That superstition and vulgar error should lay hold of so remarkable a natural object as the diamond, might be expected as a matter of course. The Romans, taught by the Indians, valued it entirely on account of its supernatural virtues. They wore the crystals in their native form, without any attempt to polish, much less to engrave them. Such, doubtless, was the ring whose diamond, "Adamas notissimus," had flashed in St. Paul's eyes at the momentous audience before the Jewish queen and her too-loving brother, in their "great pomp," and which afterwards, a souvenir of Titus, graced the imperious lady's finger in Juvenal's days. Pliny says the diamond baffles poison, keeps off insanity, and dispels vain fears. The mediæval Italians entitled it "Pietra della Reconciliazione," because it maintained concord between husband and wife. On this account it was long held the appropriate stone for setting in the espousal ring.

From Pliny, also, we have the widespread notion that a diamond, which is the hardest of stones, is yet made soft by the blood of a goat—but not except it be fresh and warm. "But this," observes Sir Thomas Browne, "is easier affirmed than proved." Upon this conceit arose another—that the blood of a goat was sovereign for the stone. And so it came to be ordered that the goat should be fed with saxifragous herbs, and such as are conceived of power to break the stone. Another mistake, formerly current, is that the diamond is malleable, and bears the hammer.

There are facts respecting the diamond as strange as the fictions. Example, its constant association with gold, noticed long ago. Where gold is, there is the diamond. This rule breaks up the belief of the old lapidaries that diamonds are found only in the East Indies, and there even are confined to Golconda, Visapoor, Bengal, and Borneo. Diamonds have recently been discovered in most of our gold-yielding colonies, and probably will turn up in all. The coincidence or companionship of gold with diamonds can hardly be accidental, although all the diamond mines whose discovery is recorded have been brought to light in the pursuit of alluvial gold washings—which was notably the case with the oldest in the Serra do Frio, Brazil, and the most productive in the world.

South Africa has yielded diamonds enough to be an earnest of more to come. Australian "diggins" have already furnished a few, and will probably yield a vast supply when their gravel comes to be turned over by people having eyes for other objects than nuggets and gold flakes. In the Paris Exhibition of 1856, two diamonds were to be seen, found in the Macquarie river. In the Exhibition of Native Productions held at Melbourne, 1865, the feature that excited the greatest interest were numerous specimens (small, but undeniable) of the diamond from various parts of the colony. Finally, in last year's Paris Exhibition, Queensland diamonds were produced. Being still rough, unprofessional persons were unable to guess at the quality of their water.