THE FRENCH BLUE.                        125 one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Little or nothing was thought about it until the death of the Duke of Brunswick, the mad diamond-miser who used to sleep surrounded with mechanical pistols which were warranted to go off with such fatal facility that it is a marvel they did not shoot his Grace in mistake for a burglar. In 1874, the Brunswick diamonds came to the hammer and amongst them a blue stone of six carats weight. Mr. Streeter, than whom there exists no better authority on diamonds, had this stone and the Hope Blue put into his hands together. He found that they were identical in color and quality, that the sides of cleavage matched as nearly as could be determined after the cutting, while the united weights plus the calculated less from re-cutting amounted to the weight of the French Blue. He immediately drew the very natural conclusion that both these stones were once united and formed the Blue Diamond brought from India by Tavernier. He, it will be remembered, called it of a "lovely