Sir Hercules Robinson, presiding on Tuesday at the half- yearly
meeting of the Standard Bank of South Africa, gave 'some astonishing statistics of the prosperity of that group of Colonies. Their external trade has risen from £13,250,000 in 1886 to £28,170,000 in 1893; the production of gold has risen to £8,000,000 a year, and will shortly be double that average, while the total export of diamonds has reached the astounding sum of sixty-lwo millions sterling in twenty years. Moreover, the market for the stones is in no way glutted, for the average price per carat has risen from £1 in 1874 to £17s. 81 in 1893. If we remember that this is the exporters' price, and that the buyers pay at least 50 per cent. more, or £90,000,000 in the twenty years, this is astonishing testimony to the increase of the world both in surplus wealth and in the appetite for luxuries. The well-to-do are paying a perpetual tax of three millions a year for a perfectly useless personal adornment. Most of the stones go to America, where diamonds are treated ss a sort of necessary addition to full dress, but there is a large demand also in this country. There is no harm in diamonds, which, when they are not crushed together in what used to be called " stomachers" and "tiaras," are very beautiful things ; but it is a little hard to read such statistics and then be told, that the world is growing less childlike every day. Nero's wife Poppess, did not love gewgaws more than the wife of Sir Gorgeous Midas.
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