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Weights and patterns of famous Diamonds, &c Page of 453 Notes Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
416 TABLE OP WEIGHTS AND PATTERNS OF DIAMONDS, &c.
composed with exquisite taste entirely of coloured diamonds of all the tints that could be collected during ten years' research by the most skilful (and unfortunate) artist-goldsmith who designed and executed the ornament.
This distinction of colour was noticed early. Ben Mansur founds his classification of the diamond upon it as follows :—" 1. The White, trans­parent. 2. The Pharaonic (with no further explanation). 3. The Olive-coloured, or white passing into yellow. 4. The Pied. 5. The Green. 6. The Blue. 7. The Fire-coloured. The two first are the commonest, the others rare ; but rarest of all that quite polished."
NOTES.
AGATE, p. 15.
Immeasurably first amongst these "nature-pictures" would stand the celebrated Agate of King Pyrrhus, if the description of it given by Pliny (xxxvii. 3) from tradition ("dicitur") was indeed correct. It displayed Apollo holding his lyre, and surrounded by the Nine Muses, each with her proper attribute ! all exactly depicted by the native shades and veins of the substance, and without the least assistance from art. Λ suspicion irresist­ibly obtrudes itself that such a group, though actually existing in the royal ring, was nothing more than a cameo-engraving, but passed off by the jocose Greek, sporting with their simplicity, upon the Roman envoys, utter novices then in art, as an unparalleled miracle of Nature. By a singular coincidence, when camei first came into fashion for ornaments in this country, they went by the name of Agate-stones. Shakspeare, for example, has the simile—
" If low, an agate very vilely cut,"
besides the well-known description of Queen Mab as
" In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the forefinger of an aiderman."
In the last quotation the comparison as to shape, involving also the idea of size, necessarily refers to the shape cut on the Agate stone, the tiny cameo nymph or bacchante, the so favourite theme of the artists of the day. In the list of Queen Elizabeth's jewels occurs, " an agath of her majesty's visnomy : " Vanderdort similarly calls his catalogue of Charles I.'s gallery " A list of the pictures, coins, and Agates," &c.
Nevertheless it must be owned by all mineralogists who have attended to this particular that Nature has sometimes drawn such artistic pictures on the Agate as to dispose us not altogether to reject as a mere fable the descrip­tion of that, the boast of the Epirote king. One indeed was lately presented to me which contains within a circular frame a charming little sea-view taken by moonlight. In the foreground lie craggy rocks, then comes the sea receding softly in parallel lines, duly shaded ; in the far distance rises a rocky island supporting a pharos; the crescent moon riding high
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