BOOKS.

MR. KING ON INFERIOR GEMS.* WE have reviewed Mr. King's book before, but we have something

to say about this greatly expanded edition. In two very hand- some and well printed volumes Mr. King gives us a compendium of one branch of mineralogy and one branch of art, precious and semi-precious stones, and the designs which for 2,000 years artists have stamped upon the only material which will retain them for that time. Everything else perishes, there are huge gaps or breaks in the polish on the limbs of the Venus de Medici, but an engraved emerald will outlast the modern world as it has outlasted the old one. Upon that subject we have said our say, but Mr. King has given us an account of the inferior gems, the stones which will last almost for ever, yet have not immense pecuniary value to attract the notice of maukind, which may still prove of interest to our readers, or at all events to such of them as are unacquainted with his special knowledge. There is jade, for example. Nine in ten of the readers we address perhaps have seen specimens of jade, the ugly, light green, soapy stone with grotesques carved on it often exhibited in the window of Oriental curiosity-shops. There is nothing uglier for sale in London.

Speaking as admirers of precious stones, which are but flowers made eternal, we still pronounce jade ugly, uglier than many common kinds of marble, decidedly uglier than any of the rarer kinds of porphyry. Why, then, is it a gem? Because it is as nearly eternal, as indestructible, and nearly as hard as diamond. Suppose Xerxes to have written his edicts on jade, the tablets would to-day have shown the characters he ordered as sharp and distinct as when he ordered them, and would show them equally, for aught any human being may guess, ten thousand years hence.

Duration of that sort is given to few things, and hence, as we believe, the value and the estimation of jade,—common jade, we mean. There is a translucent sort, which has besides some of the qualities of an ordinary gem, but the sort usually sold as jade Mr. King thus describes

This singular mineral is a combination of magnesia and silica, with small proportions of alumina and the oxides of iron and chrome. In colour it varies from a soapy greenish white, with a waxy surface, to a clear agreeable olive—the most esteemed shade. The Egyptian kind, Corsi states, is the greenest of all, approximating in beauty to the chrysoprase. This substance is excessively hard, tough, and difficult to work, almost insuperable by emery, and requiring the employment of diamond powder in the operation. It therefore appears to have baffled the skill not merely of the ancients, but even of the difficulty-courting artists of the Revival, no work exhibiting the well known style of that period existing in Jade; and yet the latter had every inducement to essay this material in the high reputation it enjoyed in their own times."

No file will ever touch that dirty soap, and it might be buried for a thousand years and never lose a letter from a microscopic inscrip- tion. Some such quality either of duration or colour distinguishes every inferior gem, even the loadstone, which Mr. King includes in his list, apparently because it has been engraved and carved—Clau- dian, for example, having seen an iron Mars which was attracted by a loadstone Venus—and amber, the petrified resin of an extinct gum. Upon amber Mr. King gives us one or two curious state- ments. Scarcely any demand for it exists in Europe, the 4,0001b. annually found being almost all sent to China, where it is powdered and burnt as incense to the deities ; and it has been made by modern chemists, who have thus at once destroyed its value, and settled for ever the moot point of its origin. Amber, therefore, is not a gem, lacking every gem-like quality ; nor is jet, which is merely fossil wood, and in its way about as perishable a substance as exists. All intagli in jet sold as antiques are pronounced by Mr. King "impudent forgeries," though very ancient relics in jet have been discovered in Britain and other countries. Though ancient, they are not indestructible, or very enduring, any more than the fragments of pottery three times or twenty times as old as they which Sir Charles Lyell dug up from the bed of the Nile.

One of the best of Mr. King's chapters, or at least one of the most interesting to the ignorant, is his account of the well worn word "cameo." It is now used almost exclusively to describe a pic- ture in relief, either on a stone of two colours or on a shell with layers of different colour, but the word is really Hebrew or Arabic, and means talisman or amulet, or still more anciently, loadstones, almost every cameo of more than a certain age being carved on hematite or loadstone, the magnetic quality greatly increasing its virtue as a charm. Mr. King is "tempted to think that Cantata came to be applied to gems in relief, as being accounted talismans

• The Natural Ilistory of Gems and Decorative Stones. By C. W. Sing, M.A. vole. London: Bell and Daldy,

Two

par theinence, seeing how the Arabs have ever looked upon all ancient bas-reliefs as magical ; and so the word travelled into Europe in the vocabulary of the Crusaders in this restricted sense. Intagli, on the other hand, the latter continued to use whenever

they could procure them for personal seals, secrete, and distin- guished such by the name Sigilla (the diminutive of sign um, in

its sense of signet), in popular parlance termed Pierres &Israel, as the supposed works of the ancient sages of that race." The shell cameo was first carved by the Italians of the Revival, say in 1450, who found it impossible to procure sardonyxes, the best material, and cut reliefs on shells which presented thin strata of white upon a buff ground. Of the early specimens few are pre- served, the shell not being imperishable, like the onyx, but the art of cutting them has of late years revived both in France and Italy.

"It is indeed the sole, though bastard, scion of the Glyptio art that yet flourishes in Italy. This revival is due to the introduction of the West Indian conch into the cameo-cutter's atelier; its numerous and richly coloured layers of varying depths emulate and often excel those of the choicest pieces of Sardonyx possessed by the ancients. The seat of the art is at Rome and at Naples. At the latter place, from their lower reputation, the works are purchaseable at much lower prices ; the subjects are perpetual repetitions of noted bas-reliefs, pictures, or gems. An interesting application of the invention is to the perpetuation of portraits either modelled from the life in wax and thence copied on the shell, or, now, done with groat fidelity after photographs transmitted from abroad. Saolini .bears at present the highest reputation in this lino, and has of into, as I am informed, had the ambition to advance to the nobler field of engraving in the true and proper material of his pro- fession. Cameo-engraving in shell has also, within the last quarter of a century, been transplanted to Paris, in whose kindly soil it flourishes as vigorously as when originally cultivated there three centuries ago under the patronage of Francois L and Henri II. The French workers—more ambitious than the Italian, the nation of copyists—scorning slavish and unvarying imitation of others, strike out original designs inspired by the taste peculiarly their own. Nothing can be more charming than the groups of Cupids engaged in infinitely diversified but always grace- ful occupations which the Parisian artist delights to imagine, and nothing also can be more appropriate for the purpose to which these camel are usually applied."

A cameo, therefore, unless vouched for on indubitable authority, may generally be taken to be a bit of Indian conch shell, carved with more or less of skill by an Italian or Frenchman not yet dead, and worth what his work would be worth, and no more.

Mr. King, it will be seen, ranks the amethyst among the inferior gems, and with a certain reason, for though the "Oriental amethyst," really a purple sapphire, is a very beautiful and very valuable stone, "our common amethyst, and the stone (perhaps) generally designated amongst the ancients by this name, is nothing more than rock crystal coloured purple by manganese and iron, and on this account is more properly termed in modern mineralogy amethystine quartz." This quartz, though often singularly beautiful, is of very little trade value—a reason, as we said, though not a perfect one, for classing it among inferior gems. We do not quite see, we confess, though ready to defer to Mr. King, why price should enter into the question, more especially as one or two stones, notably the cat's-eye and the turquoise, have local values, and as the highest gem of all, the diamond, has been produced by art. Suppose the chemists ultimately discover a mole of pro- ducing the diamond in quantities, will it cease to be a first- class gem? If it cost a shilling an ounce or a pound, it will be still the most brilliant and most indestructible of known stones, and it is by indestructibility rather than any other quality that gems should, we think, be judged. It is nearly certain that the amethyst has of all precious stones most completely lost its value. Of old it was almost too valuable for en- graving, in 1600 it was valued at half the sapphire, in the last century Queen Charlotte's necklace, which no one of her rank now would wear except when in mourning, was valued at 2,000/., and now a similar necklace would not be worth "as many shillings,"

though jewellers, we suspect, would not be content with that price. Mr. King traces the curious superstition that the amethyst protected its wearer against drunkenness to its name, from c't ilsb, but it is,

at least as probable that the name had its rise in the superstition. He assigns very carefully each occult quality to each gem, and to every one the same remark applies. No Roman or Greek ever tested his favourite stone to see if the superstition were true. No Oriental will to this day. Ask any Asiatic about the carbuncle, and he will affirm that it gives light at night, and if shown a specimen in the dark will still aver that carbuncles do act as lamps, and that the particular specimen in his hand cannot, therefore, be a carbuncle.

We have always wondered that some of the more " mysterious " gems should in the modern world have lost their value. Even the opal is now classed among inferior gems, though it is still very costly, and seems, as it always did, rather to throw out than reflect light. It was held, however, by the Romans, who cut everything en caboclion, to be second only to the diamond, and has, therefore, been degraded by the modern world five or six steps. The car- buncle or garnet cut en cabochon—" tallow-drop fashion," as we ought to describe it—is nearly valuless, and there is no real demand for a very remarkable stone, the Asteria, or star sapphire, an exces- sively hard stone, in which "the light appears as a small orb shift- ing to and fro within the stone, according as it is turned ; but when cut to a plane and polished, this orb becomes a most delicate star of five or six silky rays diverging from one centre." This stone, to which, by the way, Mr. King compares the silver grey moonstone, with its light as of the moon in a stream, is very durable ; but though greatly valued by the Romans, it seems to have lost its esteem in Europe, as, indeed, also has the "moonstone," an exquisite variety apparently of yel- low quartz, which gives back a moonlike reflection, supposed by the ancients, with their habitual contempt for the evidence of their senses, to wax and wane. In fact, durability and scarcity appear to be the modern tests of value, colour not entering materially into the matter, except as between specimens of the same stone. Nothing can exceed the rich beauty of some carbuncles, which by the side of inferior diamonds or light sapphires are as worthless as they are pleasant to look at; and the emerald, priceless as it is, can hardly vie,in colour with thefinest specimens of amethyst.

The ancient " virtues " of the stones are of course disbelieved in by modern society, though some relic of faith as to the unluckiness of the opal may, we believe, be discovered in France. Mr. King is full of such stories, usually told with perfect simplicity and clearness, and he inserts among his gems an explanation of a very curious myth of the kind. The ancients believed that the "toad had yet a precious jewel in his head," an idea possibly derived from the glitter in the eye of that ugly little reptile, but possibly also arising from the Egyptian habit of wearing amulets cut from green and yellow jasper in the shape of frogs and toads. An account of this superstition, which exhibits fully Mr. King's careful and yet gossipy and pleasant manner, must be our last extract :—

"A full account of this will be found in that repertory of mediaival medical lore, the Speculum Lapidum ' of Camillo, who, as physician to Borgia, ought to know something about poisons. He describes it by the names of Borax, Nose, and Crapondinus, and as being found in the brain of a newly killed toad. There are two kinds, the white, which is the best, and the dark, with a bluish tinge, with the figure of an eye upon it. If swallowed it was a certain antidote against poison, in its passage through the bowels driving out all noxious matters before it. More than a century later Vossius asserts (De Phys. Christ. vi. 19) that it was usual to take the Bufonites (Toad-Stone) in drink before meals, to counteract any poison that might be administered in the dishes ; singular dinner-pill, exemplifying the very uncomfortable state of society in those times. It was also believed to burn the skin, at the mere presence of poison, if worn set open in a ring so that the stone should touch the finger; besides which, it was good against all complaints of the stomach and kidneys if so carried. For these virtues, says De Boot, it is much worn in rings, in spite of its ugly colour, a fact which innumerable examples remain to confirm. Nevertheless, this invaluable guardian sold cheaply enough, 'the price asked by the vendor being regulated by the eagerness of the purchaser to possess it.'"

Mr. King will think, we doubt not, we have scarcely done him justice in confining our notice to such slight points ; but scholars know his merits already, and we have preferred to point out the popular interest of the least popular half of a work full to reple- tion of study, thought, and careful artistic criticism.