46 THE CURIOUS LORE OF PRECIOUS STONES
There
is sorcery among the Jews and their sorcerers think : " If we succeed,
it is well for us; if we fail, a Christian is the sufferer; what care
we for that?" . . . But Duke Albert of Saxony acted shrewdly. When a
Jew offered him a button, inscribed with curious characters and signs,
and asserted that this button gave protection from cuts, thrusts, and
shots, the Duke answered: "I will test that upon thyself, Ο Jew."
Hereupon he led the man to the gate, hung the button at his neck, drew
his own sword, and thrust the fellow through the body. " The same fate
would have happened to me," said the Duke, " as has happened to thee." "
Buskin,
with his keen poetic insight into the working of natural laws, saw in
the formation of crystals the action of both "force of heart" and
"steadiness of purpose." He thus found himself, consciously or
unconsciously, in agreement with the old fancies which attributed a
species of personality to precious stones. Just as the Hindu regarded
an imperfectly shaped crystal as a bringer of ill luck to the owner, so
Ruskin sees in such a crystal the signs of an innate "immorality," if
we may use this expression. Of a crystal aggregation of this type he
writes as follows :27
Opaque,
rough-surfaced, jagged on the edge, distorted in the spine, it exhibits
a quite human image of decrepitude and dishonour; but the worst of all
signs of its decay and helplessness is, that half-way up, a parasite
crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has rooted itself in the side of
the larger one, eating out a cavity round its root, and then growing
backwards, or downwards, contrary to the direction of the main crystal.
Yet I cannot trace the least difference in purity of substance between
the first most noble stone, and this ignoble and dissolute one. The
impurity of the last is in its will or want of will.
There is established a very pretty custom of assigning to the various masculine and feminine Christian
"Güdermann, "Das jüdische Unterrichtswesen," Wien, 1873, p. 225.
" " Ethics of the Dust," New York, 1886, p. 96.
