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AMETHYSTUS.
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65
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shillings,
so vast has been the importation of late years of German Amethysts and
Topazes (purple and yellow crystals of quartz), which are got in
endless abundance from various parts of Hungary, Bohemia, and notably
at Oberstein, where they are cut and polished by steam power, and
despatched into all parts of Europe to be made up into cheap articles
of jewelry. They are also found plentifully about Wicklow, in Ireland.
Barbot mentions a crystal of this kind as recently brought to Paris of
the vast weight of 65 kilos, (about 140 lbs.). When the gem was in
fashion, it was formerly imported largely from the East Indies, and
these were light coloured, the purple being shaded not equably, but
extremely lustrous. The colour of the Amethyst can be dispelled by a
careful roasting in hot ashes. Hence in the last century, when it was
the great desideratum of the jewellers to obtain a suite of stones all
exactly of the same tint, they were able to obtain this result by
subjecting the several pieces to the heat for a greater or less time,
until they were all brought to the same shade of purple. According to
modern usage this is the only gem it is allowable to wear in mourning.
The
artists of the Renaissance eagerly availed themselves of these huge and
beautiful crystals to carve them into those fanciful yet elegant vases
so acceptable to the taste of their age. The Parisian Collections offer
the choicest specimens of their skill in this line. Barbot quotes a
cup, shaped as a shell, seven inches long and deep, by six wide; also
an urn eight inches high, fluted and elaborately decorated with
engravings; both in the former treasury of the Crown.
This
stone is one of the earliest enumerated in the list of talismans or
gems whose native virtues were heightened by the figure engraved upon
them, a superstition still in its infancy in the age of Pliny, when,
although the medical virtues of many gems were generally admitted, yet
the doctrine of their supernatural powers was as yet ridiculed by the
learned as a figment of the credulous East. Thus under this head Pliny
remarks that " the lying Magi promise that these gems are an antidote
to drunkenness, and take their name from this property. Moreover, that
if the name of the Moon or Sun be engraved upon them, and they be thus
hung about the neck from the hair of a baboon, or
F
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