Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/636

 628 gold-work; three horizontal little hoops, traversed by numerous upright lines with gems and mother- of-pearl at the points of intersection. Indeed, mother-of-pearl, probably then of great value, is used profusely for the children’s crowns, and has lasted admirably during its long entombment, being still brilliant. Some mock stones placed in the smaller crowns are defaced and spoiled, perishing, as everything false must, under the hand of Time.

In the days of the Eastern emperors the children “born in the purple” were permitted to wear the royal insignia, and the fashion of Constantinople appears to have been followed by the Visigoth monarchs; who were the more likely to imitate the Byzantine mode at this time, from the fact that they had only worn crowns for sixty years when Reccesvinthus succeeded to the kingdom—Lewvigildus being the first Gothic king of Spain who possessed a royal diadem, and he reigned in 586; Reccesvinthus in 653, about forty years before Roderick, “the last of the Goths.”

Our readers are well aware that it was in the reign of the latter monarch that the Saracens invaded Spain. Doubtless it was to preserve these costly offerings from the Moors that the monks concealed them in the earth, from which they were never able to reclaim them, and where they have remained a thousand years, untouched and hidden in the ill-cultured soil of Spain.

The proprietor of the land on which they were found carried them to Paris, and sold them to the French Minister of Public Instruction, for the national collection at the Hôtel de Cluny, for the sum of 4000l. The discovery and sale, however, reached the ears of the Spanish Government, which at once claimed them as inalienable heirlooms of the Spanish crown. Whether that claim has been allowed or not, we know not. The war between France, Italy, and Austria broke out shortly after, and in the stirring events of the present, these mementoes of a long faded past have been forgotten.

There must have been a tale attached to such an offering; could we know it, we might feel a strong human interest, perchance, in this shadowy old Gothic king, whose very name was forgotten till the discovery of these offerings of his piety restored it to the lips of men.

One cannot help wishing that so interesting a relic of her past may be restored to Spain.

The earth has always been the hiding-place for treasure during periods of long and successful invasion, and it is in countries which have suffered most from foreign foes that we find the belief in “hid treasures” most prevalent.

In Hungary, the invasion of the Huns (those Ogres of the nursery) produced an amount of treasure-hiding which to this day is not forgotten; and a set of men who pass their lives in the mountains in a vain but fascinating pursuit of buried gold are still called “treasure-seekers.”

In the East, the same impression prevails, and there, probably, it is well grounded. We have ourselves heard of a recent case of treasure-hiding which may one day come to light when Greece is again an empire, and her soil worked by her sons,—if such a dream be not too wild!

A Greek lady told us that her husband’s brother, who was one of the leaders in the Greek struggle for liberty in 1828 or 1830, being “hunted on the mountains by the Moslem foe,” committed to the sure keeping of Mount Athos the gold and gems which formed the sole remaining heritage of their house.

He had of course intended to communicate the secret of its place of concealment to his brother, but he was unhappily slain in some obscure guerilla conflict before they met again.

A letter left behind him informed the survivor that Mount Athos was their banker, but did not in the slightest degree enter into particulars as to the absolute spot in which the gold and jewels were buried. Probably the Greek chief had a higher opinion of the patriotism of his followers than of their honesty, for he confided the secret to no one. When Greece was tranquillised, the family had a strict search made on every spot where Odysseus had been known to rest or wander, but in vain—to this day Mount Athos keeps the secret of the hid treasure. We have been told that amongst those which remain undiscovered, are the crown and regalia of Poland, buried at the time of the infamous partition of the country—as the statue of Charles I. at Charing Cross was in the days of England’s troubles.

We conclude by an earnest hope that the time is coming when its hiding-place may safely be revealed, and Poland, free and victorious, may rejoice in her royal treasure-trove.

lies before us one of the most eventful pages of that eventful year, in the shape of the “Times” newspaper, of October 3rd, 1798, reprinted from the original. The “Times” of that date, compared with its present size, was a veritable infant—not much bigger, when spread open, than a lady’s pocket-handkerchief—but within its little face we see clearly its present features in embryo.

The Americans, with that self-consciousness which is so characteristic of the nation, are for ever “making history,” and fidgetting themselves as to how they shall look in the pages of some future Bancroft. What a contrast to the dull Englishman of 1798, who “made history,” especially in that year, without being at all aware of the dignity of his occupation. Let us turn over our “Times,” for example, and the first thing that strikes our attention is the account of Lord Nelson’s Victory of the Nile. Our admirals then did their fighting better than their writing—a feature which some seamen of a later date seem to have reversed. The total annihilation of an enemy’s fleet is narrated by our hero in fewer words than a Yankee commander would detail the robbing of a hen-roost. Of the French fleet of seventeen line-of-battle ships only four managed to escape. They struck hard and heavy in those days without much boasting. In another part of the paper we have a glimpse of the rebellion in Ireland, a sighting of the Plymouth squadron sent under Sir Borlase Warren to intercept the Brest fleet which was sailing to reinforce the Irish rebels.