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Achates, Agate

Achates, Agate Page of 384 Aetites, Eagle-Stone Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
10
NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
shades of brown and white, is full of a dreamy repose, and of a feeling strongly recalling Bewick's inimitable little cuts in the same line. Camillo also mentions that the doorway of the " study " in Cesare Borgia's palace at Pesaro was adorned with plaques sawn from a column (antique) of a certain variegated stone, which exhibited so many dif­ferent objects, that no one could believe it who had not seen the same.
The Chinese manufacture monster Agates exhibiting the loveliest colours very fancifully disposed, by staining thin slabs of alabaster by some process of their own : and these fictitious lusus Naturae are often to bo seen in this country treasured up as wonderful curiosities of mineralogy. But far more wonderful was the invention of the Florentine anatomist (the secret died with him) of petrifying human viscera into real Agates. In the Hospital of S. Spirito may be inspected still by the incredulous a table-top made up of hearts, lungs, livers, &c, thus agatised into one large slab—meet board for a banquet of vampyros.
How firm was the belief of our forefathers in the pro­phylactic virtues of the Agate, is remarkably illustrated by a jewel presented by Archbishop Parker to Queen Elizabeth (now in the possession of Mrs. Barwick Baker). It is a large oval Agate engraved by a contemporary hand with an intaglio of Vulcan in his forge, with Venus look­ing on, and is set for a pendant. The parchment accom­panying the gift contains a long list of the properties of the stone, winding up with the dedicatory couplet, which evidently was considered by the learned donor to contain the happiest of conceits :—
Achates, Agate Page of 384 Aetites, Eagle-Stone
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