dance. This over, they fell to on the feast,
with a will, being waited on by the chief dames
of the village.

Finally, on the wedding-night—which is the
fourth night after the wedding—all the friends of
the bridal pair visit them as they lie in the nuptial
couch. Each visitor brings a bowl of milk soup;
and poor Jacques and Nannine must, bongré
malgré, receive from every one a spoonful of
that beverage. The young girls who thus visit
the bridal chamber, secure the pins which have
been used in the fastening of Nannine's shawl
and gown, as a charm to bring them husbands.

PRECIOUS STONES.

IF contingencies prevent your going to
Corinth, you content your craving with a
panorama of Corinth. If your poverty, but
not your will, compel your remaining outside a
travelling managerie, you may still have the
pleasure of admiring the pictures. When you
cannot enter a sweet-smelling cookshop, no law
prevents your looking in at the window and
sniffing the odours that exhale from below.
And if you can't pick up diamonds like Sindbad
the Sailor, nor incrust yourself with them like
Prince Esterhazy, we advise you not to take the
matter to heart, but to console yourself by
contemplating them at a distance.

The Cook's Oracle, the Almanac des
Gourmands, and Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du
Goût, have served a series of Barmecide feasts
to many a compulsory abstainer. In like manner,
those who cannot measure pearls by the
pint, nor mark points at whist with unset
brilliants, may gratify their tastes for gems by the
instructive and interesting Natural History of
Precious Stones and of the Precious Metals,
which Mr. King has given to the world.

Doubtless, jewels are best beheld in situ;
the situs, however, being neither the mine nor
the matrix, but in their proper place, about
some fair personage—which gives you the
chance of admiring two beautiful things at
once. A drawback is that family diamonds,
like family titles, often fall to the lot of the
oldest. Moreover, etiquette forbids young
ladies to wear much jewellery, diamonds being
especially tabooed. Nevertheless, wherever it
may be, a good diamond necklace is a pretty
thing to look at.

Independent of its surpassing beauty, the
diamond strikes the imagination by its value.
The re-cutting merely of the Koh-i-noor is said
to have cost eight thousand pounds. Other
grand diamonds have required a proportional
outlay to bring out their intrinsic qualities.
Even humble stones make good their claim to
attention, and will not be passed by unobserved.
In 1664, Mr. Edward Browne wrote to his
father, Sir Thomas: " March 2. I went to Mr.
Foxe's chamber in Arundell House, where I saw
a great many pretty pictures and things cast in
brasse, some limmings, divers pretious stones,
and one diamond valued at eleven hundred
pound."

That superstition and vulgar error should lay
hold of so remarkable a natural object as the
diamond, might be expected as a matter of
course. The Romans, taught by the Indians,
valued it entirely on account of its supernatural
virtues. They wore the crystals in their native
form, without any attempt to polish, much less
to engrave them. Such, doubtless, was the
ring whose diamond, " Adamas notissimus,"
had flashed in St. Paul's eyes at the momentous
audience before the Jewish queen and her too-
loving brother, in their "great pomp," and
which afterwards, a souvenir of Titus, graced
the imperious lady's finger in Juvenal's days.
Pliny says the diamond baffles poison, keeps off
insanity, and dispels vain fears. The mediæval
Italians entitled it " Pietra della Reconciliazione,"
because it maintained concord between
husband and wife. On this account it was long
held the appropriate stone for setting in the
espousal ring

From Pliny, also, we have the widespread
notion that a diamond, which is the hardest of
stones, is yet made soft by the blood of a goat
—but not except it be fresh and warm. " But
this," observes Sir Thomas Browne, " is easier
affirmed than proved." Upon this conceit
arose another—that the blood of a goat was
sovereign for the stone. And so it came to be
ordered that the goat should be fed with
saxifragous herbs, and such as are conceived of
power to break the stone. Another mistake,
formerly current, is that the diamond is malleable,
and bears the hammer.

There are facts respecting the diamond as
strange as the fictions. Example, its constant
association with gold, noticed long ago. Where
gold is, there is the diamond. This rule breaks
up the belief of the old lapidaries that diamonds
are found only in the East Indies, and there
even are confined to Golconda, Visapoor, Bengal,
and Borneo. Diamonds have recently been
discovered in most of our gold-yielding colonies,
and probably will turn up in all. The coincidence
or companionship of gold with diamonds
can hardly be accidental, although all the
diamond mines whose discovery is recorded have
been brought to light in the pursuit of alluvial
gold washings—which was notably the case
with the oldest in the Serra do Frio, Brazil, and
the most productive in the world.

South Africa has yielded diamonds enough to
be an earnest of more to come. Australian
"diggins" have already furnished a few, and
will probably yield a vast supply when their
gravel comes to be turned over by people having
eyes for other objects than nuggets and
gold flakes. In the Paris Exhibition of 1856,
two diamonds were to be seen, found in the
Macquarie river. In the Exhibition of Native
Productions held at Melbourne, 1865, the
feature that excited the greatest interest were
numerous specimens (small, but undeniable) of
the diamond from various parts of the colony.
Finally, in last year's Paris Exhibition, Queensland
diamonds were produced. Being still
rough, unprofessional persons were unable to
guess at the quality of their water.