degenerate into a form. Other ceremony in Islam there was none, circumcision being no where ordained, and only retained by the Moslem in imitation of their Pagan ancestors. It is doubtful whether Mohammed was circumcised himself; and the learned reasons assigned by commentators for Mohammed's adoption of this rite are just so many exercises of mistaken ingenuity. moral law, the sexual law partially excepted, and persistent and regular public prayer. That is the substance of Islam, the only creed essential to Mussul man salvation, the only law binding upon the soul. An active Moslem ought also to perform his social duties, to obey the Khalif, to defend the faith by arms, to bind himself under some few ceremonial laws. But all the doctors agree that he who observes only the precepts just quoted, as, There remains one other point which for example, a cripple, will still be saved; in Europe is considered, justly enough, a that the remainder are the ornaments of dogma of Islam the duty of extending Islam, rather than its foundation. The the faith by force. This, however, formnotion of an inevitable fate, of a power ed no part of the doctrine as preached before which human effort is powerless, at Mecca. It is very doubtful whether and which is now universal in the Moham- Mohammed had ever thought out his termedan world, was no idea of the Pro-rible sentence the sword is the key of phet. He doubtless caused it by the excessive rigor with which he pressed upon his followers the notion of the immediate and incessant application of the divine power to earthly affairs a notion which makes the strong Puritan doubly energetic, but inclines the weaker Asiatic to indolent acquiescence; but it was no theory of the Koran. Europeans will readily perceive wherein this scheme falls short of perfect religious harmony. As a religion for the soul, Mohammedanism is too negative, fails to meet the inherent sense of sin, and entirely omits the great correlative of benevolence, love to God, as a motive to action. By Asiatics, however, who consider that love and obedience are not so much cause and effect as absolutely synonymous, this deficiency is rarely felt; and in all other respects Islam, as a creed, is an enormous advance, not only on all idola tries, but on all systems of purely human origin. It utterly roots out idolatry, and restores the one ever-living God to his true place, if not in the heart, at least in the imagination and reverence of mankind. It establishes the principle, not indeed of benevolence toward all God's creatures, but of benevolence toward all who have deserved it by expressing their faith in the one true Deity. It prohibits all the universally recognized crimes save one, makes temperance a religious obligation, and finally releases its followers at once and forever from the burden of a cult, of a law which made ceremonial observance a source or condition of salvation. Prayer does not become a ceremony because it is fixed for stated times, and the Koran never intended it should It heaven and hell; the dogma which, chim- fection, whose only occupation is eating, and whose only recreation is woman, still thrill with excitement at the summons for the faith, and meet death with a contempt the Red Indian could only envy. In the recent war in Upper India, even the Highlanders wavered as the Ghazees flung themselves on their bayonets; and the Moplahs have been known to yell with exultation as the bayonets passed through them far enough to allow their short knives to stab deep. The promulgation of this order marked the completion of a political rather than a religious position. Mohammed could add nothing to his power as prince-no compact with his people, no conceivable subtilty of legisla tion, no fanaticism of loyalty could invest him with any thing but a faint shadow of the despotic power which must apper tain to a recognized vicegerent of God. But the additional belief that death in war is an instant passport to heaven turned all his followers into willing conscripts, and war into the most solemn and most sacred of ordinary duties. Imagine the Puritan soldiers convinced, not only that their cause was favored of God, but that Cromwell was his vicegerent, and that the day of judgment could never arrive for the soldier slain in battle, and we gain some idea of the spirit in which the first followers of Mohammed advanced to the conflict with the infidels. (TO BE CONCLUDED.) From Bentley's Miscellany. MY BIRTH-DA Y DREA M. BY EDWARD KENEALY, LL. B. THE golden Julian morn was gleaning o'er me, Then, quoth the first: "My name, beloved, is Power: ' The marble palace glittering in its glory, The pomp, the power, the attributes of kings, These I can give thee, with a name in story; Canst thou for these put forth thine eagle wings?" Then, quoth the second: "Pomp, and power, and palace, I can not give thee garden, bower, or chalice, In sooth, what I can give, I scarce can name; "This I can give thee, on thy temples wreathing, A bright example, guiding foe and friend. Out-dazzling kings-the sunshine drowns the star- She ceased, and I was left alone unguided, A little cradled child to choose between Power and Fame!-alas! alas! divided, Why should these golden goddesses be seen? I know not-care not. Virgin Fame immortal, What care I for the lures of proud dominion? Give me, sweet Fame, to soar, with heavenly pinion From the Temple Bar Magazine. KINGS AND QUEENS OF DIAMONDS, OR PRECIOUS STONES. STONES proper for personal adornment | nor yet of taste or commercial value, but may be classed as-first and supreme of it answers the purposes of the present all, of a species apart, peculiar, and isolat- paper. ed, holding no connection with any other And first as to the diamond, that mine"mineral flower," but standing alone in ral king, crowned with such a diadem of its kingly pride-the DIAMOND; then the glory as no other created thing possesses. princes of the throne, the hyaline or glass- The diamond-Adamas, or the Indomitalike crystals—such as the ruby, sapphire, ble, as it was called-is the hardest body emerald, etc.-what fine people call "hy-known: it refuses to be tried save by its aline corindons ;" then the translucent silicates, rock-crystal, and all the transparent quartz group; then feldspar, chalcedony, lapis lazuli, malachite, jasper; then jet and amber and coral; and, last of all, that peerless bit of phosphate of lime and gelatine, the moonlight-colored pearl hid in the depths of the Indian Seas. This is not quite the classification of mineralogy, peers, and will not be cut or polished by any thing yet discovered but itself. A diamond must be cut by a diamond, and polished by diamond-dust; and when De Boot's apocryphal friend, the learned physician, said he could stick one on the point of a needle, and divide it into scales by the help of his nails alone, we are sorry to say that De Boot's apocryphal friend ut "It very rarely happens," says Macchiavelli, "or perhaps, never occurs, that a person exalts himself from a humble station to great dignity without employing either force or fraud.”—Reflections on Livy, lib. ii. cap. 13. tered simple fabrications. Unless, indeed, he had found out, in a secret Baconian kind of way, that diamond was only pure carbon-the spiritual evolution of coal, the realization of the carbonic ideal-and so, when he spoke of the gem, meant only the chrysalis diamond in its antenatal tomb-diamond with a smutty face and a flaming tongue-diamond burning in the grate, and helping to cook kid-steaks or fry the inevitable omelet diamond as coal or, scientifically, carbon. But as De Boot gives another anecdote of another apocryphal friend of his, who knew of his own knowledge that a lady had two hereditary diamonds, male and female, which engendered other diamonds in a quite satisfactory and matrimonial manner, we may dismiss his assertions with more respect for his learning than reliance on his accuracy. It was a very common belief, though, that all the nobler gems were sexual, as also that they possessed various mystic and even intelligent qualities which bound them up in close relation with man. Thus they all represented certain spiritual and moral virtues; they all gave certain powers to their wearers; they all showed the presence of poison-some of them turning dark and turbid, others pale and sickly, and some shattering themselves to pieces in passionate despair and abhorrence at its touch. But, beyond these useful generic properties, the diamond had its own peculiar virtues such as none other possessed. Thus, when worn in the ephod of the Jewish high-priest, it gave token of the guilt or innocence of the accused. If guilty, the gem became dim and lustreless; if guilty unto death, it flamed with a sullen flare of fierce bloodred; but if innocent, it shone with tenfold glory. The diamond symbolized innocence, justice, faith, strength, and the impassivity of fate, and, under the name of Adamant, expressed all that human life knows of unchangeable will and the power of resistance. "It gives way to no sort of matter, neither fire nor iron," says Camillus Leonardus, physician to Cæsar Borgia, “ "but despises all ;" and an old blackletter book says that "God hath induyd hym with greatter vertues than many other stones," albeit all are indued with many. If a diamond has a greenish tinge on the thick vail or covering which it has worn in the mine, it will prove a fair and noble gem; if tinged with yellow, it will be greasy, soft, and comparatively valueless. Diamonds are often found colored, and when so are valuable in proportion to the fullness and richness of the tint; as witness Mr. Hope's magnificent blue diamond, and that glorious green gem which forms the button in the King of Saxony's state-hat. Even perfectly black diamonds have been found, but these are rare; and Mr. Meyer's, in the Great Exhibition, was held to be a great curiosity. It weighed three hundred and fifty carats, (a carat is equal to three and one sixth grains troy, six carats being equal to nineteen grains troy,) and was so hard that nothing could cut or polish it, not even the dust of its white brethren. The small, soft, and illcomplexioned diamonds, neither purely colorless nor richly tinged, are broken up for diamond-dust worth fifty pounds the ounce, and used for cutting cameos and onyxes, as well as for polishing their uncivilized relations. Indeed, carnelians, agates, cairngorms, etc., could not be engraved by any other agent than diamonddust; though the ancients engraved even the "hyaline corindons" by means of their metal tools alone, and made no use of diamond-dust. But we have lost a few arts, as well as gained many, since the days of our brave old bearded elders. The difference between brilliant, rose, and table diamonds consists only in the cutting. Three hundred and fifty years ago all diamonds were cut with four flat surfaces-these were Indian-cut or table diamonds; later they were cut in the form of half a polyhedron resting on a plane section-this was the rose diamond; and a short time after this innovation Mazarine caused twelve to be cut as brilliants, yet known among the crown-jewels of France as the Twelve Mazarines. That is, they were cut into the form of two truncated pyramids, the upper, or bizel, being much more deeply truncated than the lower, or collet, and having thirty-two facets inclined under different angles, while the lower has but twenty-four; each facet, both of the bizel and collet side, having its own distinctive name and arbitrary proportion. This is the most effective, but the most wasteful, way of cutting diamonds-about one half the weight being lost in converting them into brilliants or roses from the rough. Old diamonds are more carefully cut than the quite modern, and are worth forty or fifty per cent more. The most celebrated diamonds known at the present day are, first, the "Orloff," or "Grand Russian,", state-sword. The "Star of the South" is weighing one hundred and ninety-three the largest diamond as yet brought from carats, called "The Moon of the Moun- Brazil, and belongs to the King of Portu tain" when it belonged to Nadir-Shah, gal. Uncut it weighed two hundred and or, according to another account, when it fifty-four and a half carats; cut, it is one made one of the idol's eyes in the beauti- hundred and twenty-five; it is estimated ful Brahminical temple, whence a horny- as worth three millions, and is slightly fisted French soldier stole it. It fell into approaching to pink in hue. It was the hands of Shafrass, the Man of Millions found by three Brazilian exiles, poor felliving at Balsora, (1747;) and, after a lows! and brought them wealth and freelapse of ten years, when reports had died dom, as it ought to have done. The away, and the scent after the missing grandfather of the present King of Portwin of poor Monoculos had grown cold, tugal used to wear it in the rough: he it was offered for sale at Amsterdam, and had a hole bored through it, and slung it purchased by Count Orloff for his impe- round his neck on gala-days. The "Kohrial mistress. It is about the size of a i-noor," or "Mountain of Light," is the pigeon's egg, of exquisite lustre but de eighth and smallest of these paragon diafective form. Magnificent as it is though, monds, (all diamonds weighing over a the Rajah of Mattan is said to possess one hundred carats are called Paragon ;) but superior to it, and, indeed, superior to it was originally the largest diamond any other diamond extant. But no ever known, weighing uncut nine hundred threats nor bribes will induce the Rajah carats. It was reduced to two hundred to part with a gem which is not only the and eighty by Hortensio Borgis, the Ve finest in the world (it weighs, or is said to netian diamond-cutter, who was the first weigh, three hundred and sixty-seven ca- to try his hand on it, and who managed rats,) but has also mystic powers of heal to lessen it to this enormous extent, ing, and with the preservation of which though not attempting to cut it into a the family fortune is inextricably inter- brilliant. The Great Mogul, to whom it woven something like the Luck of belonged, instead of paying him for his Edenhall, in a more magnificent transla- labor, fined him three thousand rupees, tion. Then comes the "Grand Tuscan," and would, in his Great-Mogulish wrath, which has passed now into the possession have fined him more, had Hortensio Borof Austria, a nine-sided rose diamond gis possessed more wherewith to pay. weighing one hundred and thirty-nine and It is believed that the Koh-i-noor and the a half carats, of a yellowish tint, which Orloff are one and the same diamond, and somewhat lessens its value, and worth one that, if they could be reunited, they hundred and fifty-five thousand six hun- would make up the size and weight dedred and eighty-two pounds. That eigh- scribed by Tavernier, and prove to be ty-two pounds is a delicious piece of mine- this matchless gem of nine hundred carats ralogical precision. The Regent "which once belonged to the Great Mogul,, though not the largest, yet of the purest and was the very paragon of paragons. water and most perfect shape of all the Since the Mountain of Light came into great diamonds in Europe-was stolen the possession of the English it has been from the mines of Golconda, and sold to cut as a brilliant, whereby it has been Thomas Pitt, grandfather of the Earl of still further diminished in weight, but enChatham, and governor of Fort St. hanced in value and beauty. The old George. He in turn sold it to the Duke Iron Duke was the first to place it in the of Orleans, then regent, for ninety-two mill; and it took thirty-eight days to cut, thousand pounds, though it was worth working twelve hours a day without indouble that sum; reserving to himself the termission. waste caused by the cutting, which made Next to the Paragons come a few highly a small fortune in moderate-sized dia- celebrated diamonds of rare value and monds and diamond-dust, but spending beauty, but below the paragon standard of five thousand pounds in the negotiation. a hundred carats. There is the "Shah of After a few vicissitudes, the "Pitt" or Persia," with its curious inscription of InRegent "-it has both names-returned dian possessors, now belonging to Russia to the crown of France, and is now in the-a long irregular prism weighing eightycenter of the imperial diadem; but Na- six and three sixteenths carats; and the poleon wore it mounted in the hilt of his pear-shaped "Sancy," which was the small " |