est of the three possessed by Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and which now belongs to France-the others having gone by circuitous routes, the one to the Pope and the tiara, the other to Austria and the imperial crown. For Charles the Bold, and, indeed, all his congeners, were the greatest patrons of jewels known in medieval Europe; and all the royal collections extant gained by the fall of the House of Burgundy. The Sancy was lost on the field of Nancy, where Charles had worn it, and where he lost not only his diamond but his crown and his life. Picked up by a common soldier, it was first thrown away as a piece of glass, then sold for a florin to a Swiss priest-after ward falling into the hands of the Baron de Sancy, a Huguenot nobleman, who caused it to be conveyed to the King, Henry III. But the messenger was at tacked by brigands on the way, and swallowed the gem to preserve it. The corpse was opened, and the diamond found in his stomach. Then there is the marvelously pure "Nassack" diamond, pear-shaped, and weighing seventy-eight and five eighths carats; and the beautiful brilliant, "Pigott," bought by the Pasha of Egypt for thirty thousand pounds; and the magnificent triangular "blue diamond,” which was stolen from the French regalia in the famous robbery of jewels, and never more heard of; and there are the grand crown-diamonds of Spain; and the diamonds of the imperial crown of Brazil, "beyond doubt the most splendid of any crown possession, either in ancient or modern times," according to the authoress of Lithiaka. And then there is a new diamond lately found in the Brazils, and in the possession of Mr. Dresden; a diamond as yet unchristened, but "decidedly one of the finest and purest in color known," says Mr. Pole: it is a large pearshaped or triangular brilliant, weighing seventy-six and a half carats-nearly the weight of the Nassack-and will probably soon become the property of a crowned head. emetics; for the most common place of concealment is the stomach, and the Management only does what the negro himself would do a few hours later to obtain repossession of the gem. But notwithstanding all these precautions, and notwithstanding that all stones weighing more than two carats belong to royalty (referring, at least, to the mines of Golconda, the most celebrated and richest in the world,) yet several gems of ten, and even twenty carats, make their way into the market, and find purchasers in spite of risk and law. If a slave finds a stone weighing seventeen and a half carats, he is a free man on the spot. The mines are scientifically worked, and gems are no longer got by flinging beef-steaks down inaccessible precipices, for vultures and eagles to bring up again, with a fringe of diamonds adhering to them; which was the manner in which they were procured in mythic times, according to the assertions of philosophers and Sindbad the Sailor. Diamonds and gold have always had a strange connection together, and in Brazil are found in close union. In some parts of the country, gold can be picked up in the streets after a shower of rain, and diamonds have been found entangled in the roots of vegetables, and in the crops of chickens. Diamonds are supposed to grow and ripen in the mines; thus rock crystal, which is found in the same kind of matrix, is called the "unripe," diamond the "ripe" gem; and Madame de Barrera tells a curious story, quoted from Mr. Mawe, of a negro who found a magnificent bit of “unripe diamond," weighing near a pound, and which for its lustre and purity was taken for the real thing. It was only when Mr. Mawe scratched the surface with a real diamond, that it was found to be nothing but a very perfect bit of rockcrystal, and worth only a handful of pence instead of a king's revenues. The diamond is phosphoric and electric; possesses the property of simple refraction; but, in spite of its marvelous brilliancy when cut and polished, is duller The diamond-mines are well guarded than even fine quartz-crystals when uncut. every where, but sometimes thefts take Many colorless gems-as white rubies, place undiscovered; and sometimes even emeralds, sapphires, etc.- have been passthe most cunning hiding-places are founded off in the trade as diamonds; but they out-as when a negro stole a diamond weighing two carats and hid it in the corner of his eye; but was detected. If any one is suspected of theft, he is taken to a solitary room, locked up, and given powerful are neither so hard nor so heavy, nor would they resolve themselves into pure carbon if they were burnt, supposing that any owner chose to make that crucial experiment. Guyton Morveau, in 1772, from Ceylon, which is a very island of gems; and one of the most magnificent in the civilized world is that in the insignia of the Saint Esprit, among the crownjewels in France. The dove is formed of a single sapphire of great size and marvelous beauty, mounted on white diamonds, and surrounded by the finest suite of blue diamonds in existence. The blue diamonds are almost as intense in color as the sapphire itself. The asteria, or star-stone sapphire, is a singularly lovely gem; grayish-blue in color, but turn it which way you will, you see ever six rays of brilliant silver light stream from it. Sometimes the stone is red, when the star-rays are golden yellow; and sometimes they are purely white on a ground of red or blue. The girasol sapphire has a most beautiful play of opalescent light, pinkish, auroracolored, or bluish. The sapphire is pure alumina, colored by one of the magic agents by which Nature transforms her children and masquerades her servants. triumphantly proved that the diamond was nothing but a combustible crystal of pure carbon, and converted a bit of iron into fine steel in the process. And lately M. Despretz has been said to have made microscopic crystals possessing all the properties of real diamonds, or crystalliz. ed carbon. But this, again is denied. The trade of polishing and cutting diamonds is almost entirely in the hands of the Jews of Amsterdam, and about ten thousand persons are employed in it. Louis Bergheim, or Berquen, of Bruges, was the first diamond-polisher in Europe, and he performed his first feat in the year 1456. Artificial diamonds are made by fusing a sliceous base with chloride of silver, which is also the composition, varied in proportion, of the artificial opal. The lower kinds of paste are formed of rockcrystal or fine glass thrown up by tin-foil. Next to the diamond in hardness, beauty, and value, comes the sapphire-the holy sapphire," which renders the bearer pacific, amiable, pious, and devout, and "The emeraude passeth all grene confirms the soul in good works," which thynges of grenesse," says the old blackrefuses to shine for the beautifying of the letter book sententiously, and with a unchaste or the impure, and, which, by beautiful ignorance of alumina and gluthe mere force of its own pure rays, kills cina, of sapphire and beryl. "The finest all noxious and venomous creatures. How come from the floode of Paradyse terresto describe that soft deep blue-deepest tre," wherever that may be, and are callin the males, fairest in the females to ed on earth the Stone of God; for the which nothing living can be compared, emerald too was a holy gem. "There save perhaps the exquisite glory of an be a matter of beestes that be called Irish eye? The sapphire in its true col- Gryffons that keepeth these stones emor is blue-blue as an Italian heaven, blue eraudes in the floode, that cometh from as the deep blue sea; but it is also reda Paradyse terrestre into the land of Beand yellow and green and violet and hair-brown-such a brown as the Venetian painters loved, with a golden light striking through and it is bluish-gray and blackish, and it is sometimes radiated and chatoyant. But when all these various colors, it is called by various names: it is oriental ruby when red; oriental topaz when yellow; oriental emerald when green; oriental amethyst when violet; adamantine spar when hair-brown; emery when in granulated masses of bluish-gray; asteria, or star-stone, when radiated; corundum when dull and dingly colored. Thus all the finest gems are mere varieties of the sapphire, which stands next in order to the kingly diamond himself. The sapphire sometimes changes color by artificial light, and Mr. Hope's" saphir merveilleux," which is a deep delicious blue by day, becomes distinctly amethystine at night. The finest blue sapphires come heste. And these manner of beestes have iiij. feete and ij. iyen, and the body before lyke an Egle and behynde lyke a Lyon. And a manner of folks that be named Arymples, (Arimaspes?) that have but one iye in the forhede. And they seke and finde these Emeraudes, and when they go for them they be all armed, and so they seke the sayde stones in the sayde floode of Paradyse terrestre, and there they fynde them. And the sayd Gryffons flye all about and seke these sayde folkes that have but one iye in the forehede: and they do theyr power to take away the stones from them, for they be right fearse and angry with them, that they bere them away, but these sayd folks be so armed that the sayde fowle gryffons may do them no harme. That emeraude that is most clennest and passynge grene, he is most gentyll, precyous, and best." Echoes of these old superstitions still lin ger round the emerald-mines; and if the one-eyed people and the griffins have gone, there is yet living an enchanted dragon which watches over the mines of Las Emeraldas in Peru, and prevents curious people from visiting them too narrowly; and the famous gems of Mount Zeborah are guarded by terrible genii. But nothing worse than the peril of the place itself hides in that awful rift in the Tyrolese Alps, where the earthquake has rent the hills in sunder, and torn out from the darkness a very wealth of emeralds, loosely imbedded in the sides of the rock. It is a terrific venture to be swung over the abyss, and lowered down those steep precipitous sides, kept back from eternity only by the strands of a frail hempen rope: but Madame de Barrera knew a woman who had nerve enough to face the danger, and who came back from her perilous journey with a rich harvest of gems as her reward. Though the first yield of these stones came from Africa, the African mines are by no means the most prolific, nor are the African stones the finest. South-America is the real nursery for emeralds; and marvelous stories are told of Montezuma's clasp, and the sacred emerald, as large as an ostrich egg, which was the mother of all the emeralds, and desired nothing so much as the company of her young daughters, the smaller emeralds--whereby the priests got an immense collection together, as is the manner of priests every where. It was a holy gem with them, as with the Jewish rabbis-worn by the one in a ring, by the other in the ephod or breastplate. Cortez stole five of these emeralds from one of the temples; the first of which was cut into the form of a rose with its leaves, the second was a toy, the third a fish, the fourth a bell with its clapper of one large pear-shaped pearl, and the fifth a cup, for which a Genoese lapidary offer ed forty thousand ducats. And in the Temple of the Sun was found one as large as a pigeon's egg. But the mother was never found, though all her daughters were hunted up and captured. Dr. Burns speaks of an emerald parroquet, as large as life, and cut out of one single stone, which the Ameers of Scinde possessed; and is it Theophrastus who mentions two emerald columns sent to Ptolemy Philopater for his wife Arsinoë, which were three cubits broad and four cubits high; as well as an obelisk forty cubits high, and made out of forty solid emeralds ? All these enormous masses, though, were probably blocks of green jasper; or they might have been blocks of beryl, for beryl is a very mammoth among the precious stones, and sometimes found in immense masses. A block weighing eighty pounds, but opaque, was sent to the Great Exhibition, where every thing great and curious was sent; and another of about the same size and weight is now in the British Museum. And lately a monster, weighing two hundred and thirty-eight pounds, has been found in the United States, at New-Hampshire. But we will come to the common beryl presently. Yet emerald is a beryl-it will be remembered that oriental emerald, the noblest kind, is a green sapphire; and there are two other varieties of beryl-very humble cousins of the emerald-the precious beryl or aqua marine, and the common beryl. It is said that the emerald is born white, and ripens in the mine to its mature perfectness of meadow-green; and an account is given, but not authenticated, of one found in the province of Cuzco with two white corners, while all the rest of the stone was green-the ripe gem not fully ripe, and still retaining traces of its infantine condition. One of the largest emeralds on record was in the Great Exhibition, and belonged to the Duke of Devonshire. It weighed eight ounces eighteen pennyweights, was two inches long and two and three eighths in diameter. The chemical composition of the emerald is sixty-six and a fraction of silica, fifteen and a fraction of glucina, (a sweet earth,) sixteen and a fraction of alumina, with a dash of the oxides of iron and chrome. Its crystal is a long six-sided prism; and men once thought that this long six-sided prism restored sight and memory; sent evil spirits howling into space; gave its wearers the power of finding out secrets; changed color when the lover was faithless, passing from the hue of the spring-leaf to that of the sere; and if unable to do its possessor good, or to avert evil, shivered into a thousand atoms-broken by despair. The beryl is a kind of poor relation of the emerald, with some of the family features of my lord. When very pale, clear, and finely tinted, it is known as the aqua marine, and though not valuable, is a pretty gem, chaste and simple. In general, the beryl is of a sea-green color or a pale blue, partaking both of emerald and sapphire combined, but not equal to either; and sometimes it is golden yellow, and sometimes it is white. It cures livercomplaints and the jaundice, reconciles married folks, chases idleness and stupidity, and is sacred to the month of October; but is of no special value, unless it has risen from beryl to emerald, or has lightened from the opaque and lustreless mammoth of the mines to the clear and dainty sea-water gem. The finest aqua marines come from Siberia, Hindustan, and Brazil; and Don Pedro has one flawless specimen as large as a calf's head, and weighing more than eighteen and a half pounds troy. The ruby, the flaming blood-red ruby, the "live coal" of the Greeks, the anthrax, which, under its name of carbuncle, was one of the twelve gems that made up the sacred ephod-the ruby is one of the most magical of all gems. It is to be found in all Eastern romances, lighting up enchanted halls, and filling the dragon-guarded caves with floods of radiance; and what but the ruby gave that magnificent stream of living glory from the bowl of jewels which Abraham set in the midst of his iron city, to give light to his imprisoned wives? For Abraham was a jealous polygamist, according to the Talmud, and must needs shut up his numerous wives in an iron city, where the very sunshine might not reach them. Yet to give them light he set a bowl of jewels in the midst, which filled all the air with lustre. And as the ruby is really phosphoric, and, when set in the full rays of the sun, or exposed to a great amount of heat, gives out a certain radiance, this property was quite groundwork enough for Eastern exaggeration to embroider with fable. To the present day, the Indian princes are more tenacious of the ruby than of any other gem, and are exceedingly jealous of their wealth either in the mines or out of the mines, guarding both mines and jewels as if half the glory of their empire, and all its stability, depended on the safety and the numbers of their rubies. The ruby is of many kinds-not counting the oriental, or red sapphire the carbuncle of romance. There is the spinel or full scarlet-red, the best form of true ruby; the balass or rose-red; the rubicelle or orange-red; the almandine or violet red; the chlorospinel or green-red, and the pleonaste or black; there is also a cat's-eye or opalescent ruby, found in Burmah. The finest ruby in the world belongs to the King of Pegu, but the Subbah of the Deccan possesses also a magnificent ruby, a full inch in diameter; and the noblest in Europe was brought from China, and is in the imperial crown of Russia. There is also a great beauty set in the center of the Maltese cross in the English crown. It is heart-shaped, unpolished, of the hue of a Morella cherry, and semi-transparent. It was brought from Spain by the Black Prince, and worn by Henry V. at Agincourt. The ruby, like all the nobler gems, gave notice of poison, and refused to endure its presence; it also grew dark and cloudy if any evil was about to befall its wearer; but it banished sadness and many forms of sin and vice. Rubies were held to be male and female; Pliny saying that "the males were more acrid and vigorous, the females more languishing;" while old Leonardus explains the difference as that "in the males the stars appear burning within them, but the females throw out their brightness." The chemical composition is seventy-five per cent of alumina, seventeen of magnesia, four of peroxide of iron, while a fraction of silica, and the fractions of the elements mentioned above, make up the rest. But it is essentially alumina and magnesia. Chemically allied to rubies-being composed of the silicates of alumina, lime, iron, and manganese-and naturally following after in a paper on gems, comes the family of the garnets. And not a small family either. For, first there is the precious or noble garnet, of a deep clear poppy red, and not so very unlike the braver ruby, called also almandine like the violet-red ruby, and got from Ceylon and Greenland; and there is the common garnet, with a dash of tawny in the red, and not so transparent as the precious; and the grossularia, like a gooseberry, from Siberia, and of a dirty yellow-green; and there is the cinnamon stone, of a light cinnamon color; and the melanite or black; and the ouvarovite or green, very like an emerald; and the oriental garnet found in Pegu, of an orange-red drawing on a hyacinthine yellow; and another of so fine a violet that it is often mistaken for an amethyst, but betrays itself at night-for the violet-red becomes orangered under artificial light, and so proves itself to be no Wine-Stone after all.' Garnets can be melted into a black enamel : they vary in size from a grain of sand to an apple, and are held by some to have been the ancient carbuncle, though others say this was the ruby. Of the garnet family, are the tourmalines, red, green, and yellow; but not of the family is the hyacinth or zircon- that brownish-red, and sometimes scarlet-red, and sometimes pale straw-color, and sometimes smoketinged green, (called then jargon,) which has been more than once passed off as a diamond, when colorless and of fine proportion. But the hyacinth has been made before now to do duty both for rubies and garnets, when the seller was quick-witted and the buyer slow-sighted. There is an oriental topaz which is a sapphire, and a false topaz which is a quartz, but the true topaz is different to both, and with its own peculiar and special virtues. The topaz was believed to have certain cooling and medicinal properties, "and was sought for by mariners when they had no light." For the topaz has such a gift of inner radiance that it can dispel darkness like the carbuncle; and one which the noble Lady Hildegarde gave to a certain Monsieur Adalbert threw out a light so brilliant that it illumined all the chapel where it hung, and enabled the priests to dispense with any of the paraffine or colza of the period. The oriental topaz, or yellow sapphire, is of a soft jonquil or citron color, at times bright and golden, but when finest then softest in hue, and sometimes as if full of golden fragments. Next to the oriental in hardness and richness of color, comes the Brazilian, of a deep orange-yellow, or sometimes so languid and colorless as to be mistaken for diamonds - called "gouttes d'eau." Sometimes the orangered topaz is made to imitate a balass ruby by heating in sand, when the yellow is discharged, and it becomes of a pure rosered. The Bohemian are hyacinthine, red, brown, or tawny, and sometimes of a dirty yellow-white; those from Saxony hard, clear, and yellow; the native topaz of Ceylon is a pale soft blue, and called the "white and water sapphire;" and very fine green and blue varieties are brought from Siberia and Kamschatka. gold, and worn round the neck or left arm, the topaz was a charm against all sorcery and magic; it had also the power of dispelling night-terrors, banishing melancholy, curing cowardice, calming anger and madness, and brightening the wit. It gave notice of poison by losing its color, and was the chrysolite or gold-stone of the ancients. Its composition is thirty-four of silica, fifty-seven of alumina, and seven of fluoric acid-the fractions not counted. It is most esteemed when rose-red or pure white, like those from Minas Novas in Brazil. Set in From the Temple Bar Magazine. OF THE ALPS. ICE-CAVERN TEMPLES OF THE rapid tourist sees less than he fan- | guide points out to him. He is enchantcies he does; he misses, ten chances to ed, and gapes with delight; he knows one, the precise spot from which, and the not, however, that, had he deviated a exact time at which, to view the land few yards to the right or the left, or scape. Assume he is about to visit a perched himself upon yonder easily accescharming vista, a magnificent panorama-sible pinnacle of rock, a far finer expanse the theme of poets and painters, the rapture of hand-book makers. He ascends the beaten path; he pauses at the appointed resting-places; he eulogizes the choice bits of scenery which his veteran of woodland and river and lake and upland would have unfolded themselves before him, and that he would have seen an altogether new picture, from the mere fact of its having been contemplated from |