Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/31

28, 1862.] again with a defiant, reckless sort of air, broke into a laugh, and laid the blame on her headache. Robin said he would walk home with her.

“No, Robin, I would rather you did not to-night,” she replied. “I have two or three things to get at Mother Duff’s, and I shall stop there a bit, gossipping. After that, I shall be home in a trice. It’s not dark: and, if it were, who’d harm me?”

They laughed. To imagine harm of any sort arriving, through walking a mile or so alone at night, would never enter the head of honest country people. Rachel departed: and Robin, who was a domesticated man upon the whole, helped his wife to put the children to bed.

Scarcely an hour later, a strange commotion arose in the village. People ran about wildly, whispering dread words to one another. A woman had just been drowned in the willow-pond.

The whole place flocked down to the willow-pond. On its banks, the centre of an awe-struck crowd, which had been quickly gathering, lay a body, recently taken out of the water. It was all that remained of poor Rachel Frost—cold, and white, and.

thy tender rings behind thee, overtop that spear of grass, Slowly browse across the leaf here, slowly browse and slowly pass. O, what thrilling loves await thee! O, what wealth of purple wings! Yea, the air shall be thy kingdom! thou shalt sip celestial springs! Blind as th’ first of all thy race was to thy fate, thou wendest on: I can fuse thy past, thy present, and thy future into one! Yea, my kinship to th’ Eternal thou revealest in my thought, And the days of time are swallowed in the day where time is not. I, a prophet, gaze upon thee, deep self-awe is in my heart, I can look from what thou shalt be back to what this eve thou art. Is there One, from heights of wisdom, looking down this eve on me, Turning at this moment to me from the being I shall be? .

a gentleman,—of fortune—and with a taste for fine things,—and goodness in guns, clothes, jewels, laces,—

A dandy of sixty, who bows with a grace,

And has taste in collars, cuirasses, and lace.”

Some one—I think it was that radical Hone—wrote this rhyme about the Regent, of whom, in his liking for finery, I am, perhaps, a type. Am I better or worse?—’tis not for me to say. But I have many kind friends, whose judgment, learning, and experience I value, and on which I know I can rely;—I trust I write with proper diffidence—so that with their aid I can make a very interesting narrative of what I see at the Exhibition at Kensington, where “Emulation’s thousand sons, who one by one pursue,” are just now holding their superb fair—festival—International show, &c. What I see to please me, perhaps I should rather say: and I shall begin with “The Diamonds,” as I think every one acquainted with my long-cherished habits will agree that I should.

In the Creation, and in the wonderful narrative of it, surely the most imposing command is—“Let there be light.” So amid all the myriad riches of the sullen mine, its gold, silver, platina, ore, and quartz, and silica, and pyrites, and the heaps of products from the uses of the pickaxe, spade, and shovel,—how strange that ’tis the rudest labour, delving and digging as in the primæval days, which works most ably and successfully in the lately discovered auriferous regions—amid all the wonders and splendours, I say, dug from the bowels of the harmless earth, this, on which “light” plays, sparkles, and shines, as though the precious gem were itself “light” solidified and fixed, transcends everything that has grown up, far or near, in its neighbourhood.

And, that you may understand how keenly this strange beauty of the Diamond affects even those whose business it is to cut, polish, refine, and remove from its grosser covering or incrustation, the stone which is perhaps one day to be “a king’s ransom,” take the following fact. The artist who was employed to cut the was months at his task. With such veneration did he set himself to his work, that if his hand trembled in the morning when he rose before continuing his responsibility of shaping or thinning this magnificent treasure, he stayed work for the day. Long he pondered whether he should venture to thin or diminish the size of this delight of his eyes,—whether he should dare to lessen its weight, even though he increased its brilliancy. But he went on as a great workman, loving and honouring what he had to do, and the jewel was thinned and pared somewhat, and became the magnificence and glory we now see it. I can well believe and estimate this Oriental worship for “The Diamond,” and can understand an artist’s sacrifices for quality instead of quantity, as my dogged friend at my elbow suggests. Will it be considered childish for me to aver, moreover, that I thoroughly relish the allegory of Sinbad the Sailor’s adventures in the valley of Diamonds, and his account of the merchants’ stratagem to obtain the jewels.

In Mr. Lane’s very interesting notes to his translation of Sinbad’s story in the Arabian Nights, “El-Kazweenee” relates that—“To the place in which the diamond is found, no one can gain access. It is a valley in the land of India, the bottom of which the sight reacheth not; and in it are venomous serpents, which no one seeth but he dieth; and they have a summer abode for six months, and a winter abode where they hide themselves for a like period. El-iskender (either Alexander the Great or the first Zu-l-karneyn) commanded to take some mirrors and throw them into the valley, that the serpents might see in them their forms and die in consequence. It is said also that he watched for the time of their