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134 PRECIOUS STONES.
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To
Glastonbury, where the winter thorn Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of
our Lord ; And there awhile it bode ; and if a man Could touch, or see
it, he was healed at once, By faith, of all his ills.—But then the
times Grew to such evil that the holy Cup Was caught away to Heaven,
and disappear'd."
The
falling of an Emerald from its setting has been held an ill omen to the
wearer, even in modern times.. When George III. was crowned, a large
Emerald fell from his diadem ; and America was lost to England during
his reign. De Boot, 1636. gives a method for extracting from Emeralds
their colouring matter, which when taken internally proves so
efficacious.
Of
the Emerald, wrote Leonardus, 1565, '" Its greenness is so intense
that it is not only not dulled when put under any light, or the beams
of the Sun, but is superior to all force ; and stains the encircling
Air with its greenness." De Boot alleged of this Precious Stone :
"It-will preserve the chastity of women ; or will betray the violation
thereof by straightway bursting into fragments."
Mr. King, in his Natural History of Precious Stones, and Gems, Cambridge,
1865, tells concerning the-Cingalese (people of Ceylon), that they
anxiously seek after the thick bottoms of our ordinary flint glass
wine-bottles ; out of which they cut very fine " Emeralds," which they
dispose-of at high prices to the " Steamboat Gentlemans ! " After a
like fashion the " Brighton Emeralds," so largely purchased by
visitors, to that popular sea-side resort, are similarly got from
bottles thrown purposely into the sea by lapidaries there; which
bottles (or rather their bottom ends) become by the attrition of the
shingle, speedily converted, into the form of natural pebbles.
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