when the collet was turned towards the palm of the hand, so that the possessor could see, without being seen, all manner of persons and things. By means of this ring Gyges is said to have gained the Throne of Lydia, having employed it to kill Candaules and seduce the affections of his Queen. Rings were first used as seals by the Greeks. Alexander the Great, after the defeat of Darius, used his ring for sealing the letters he sent into Asia, and his own for those he sent to Europe. These rings were chiefly made of gold; but the Spartans exhibited their peculiar idiosyncrasy by wearing rings of iron. In this matter the Spartans were a sort of Quakers in their way, and they wore iron rings for much the same reason that the "Friends" wear drab clothes and broad-brimmed hats -to show their humility.

The disciples of Epicurus, in veneration, and as a happy omen, had a figure of their master engraved on their rings. Mithridates, as we all remember, carried poison in the collet of his ring to be able to put an end to his life when he might desire to escape disgrace. The story of the ring of Polycrates, King of Samos, has been repeated in various forms. This king having, during his whole life been favoured by fortune, was willing to make a visible trial of it by throwing his ring into the sea; but by a very surprising incident he was so fortunate as to find the same ring in the belly of a large fish that was served next day at his table.

When rings were brought into Italy from Greece, the Romans followed the Spartan fashion, and made their rings of iron. At the time of Romulus, and during the reign of the kings, only the most distinguished persons were privileged to wear rings made of gold. Gold rings, however, seem to have been more common among the Sabines, as shown in the story of Tarpeja. Tarpeja being gone to draw water for the sacrifice, betrayed one of the gates of the capital to Tatius, King of the Sabines, and demanded as a recompense the rings or bracelets the soldiers wore on their arms; but they, pretending she had asked for their bucklers, crushed her to death between them and entered the city, thus acquitting themselves of their promise.

In Rome it was customary for the bridegroom, before marriage, to send the bride a ring of iron without either stone or collet-a plain ring in fact-to denote how lasting their union ought to be and the frugality they were to observe together. Luxury, however, soon stepped in, the wedding rings were made of gold.

The first inhabitants of England, Ireland, and Scotland, were accustomed to wear their rings on the middle finger; but the custom at length prevailed among all nations of wearing them on the finger next to the little one of the left hand, which thence has got the name of the annulary or ring finger. The ancient Egyptians wore their rings upon this finger because it was supposed that a small vein proceeded from it direct to the heart.

The traditions respecting the precious stones are exceedingly curious. The diamond has always been esteemed the rarest of all stones. The ancients supposed that the diamond engendered others. There is a story of a princess of the family of the Luxembourgs who had two hereditary diamonds, which produced in a certain time a large family of young diamonds of the same lustre and water. The virtue anciently attributed to the diamond was against poison, panic terrors, the plague, wakefulness, prestiges and enchantments. It was supposed to calm anger and foment love between man and wife; and no doubt it has done so very often when the husband has made his wife a present of a diamond necklace or bracelet. Some ascribe to it the virtue of a talisman when under a favourable aspect of the heavens. The diamond symbolises constancy, fortitude, innocence, and the heroic virtues generally.

The carbuncle was much prized in ancient times, and there were many strange speculations about it. Garcias, ab Horto, says that he saw, in possession of the

Viceroy of the Indies, a carbuncle whose splendour was so prodigious that it looked like a blazing coal. Ælian relates that a young stork having been cured of a broken thigh by a woman of Tarentum, in gratitude for her care let fall into her lap a precious carbuncle, "which shined in the night like a burning candle." It was supposed that dragons carried carbuncles about them to give themselves light. The Chaldeans had so great a veneration for this stone that they used it in their religious ceremonies. The supposed virtues of the carbuncle are to resist fire, to cure sore eyes, to divert dreams, and to serve as an antidote against corrupt and pestilential air.

The ruby, at one time supposed to be of the family of the carbuncle, differs very materially from that stone. It is diaphanous and variegated with spots of azure. The largest ever known was the size of a hen's egg, and valued at sixty thousand ducats. The virtues ascribed to the ruby are the power of resisting poison, preserving from the plague, banishing sorrow, repressing luxury, and averting evil thoughts. The ancients supposed that it changed colour at the time of impending misfortunes, and resumed its ordinary hue as soon as they were over. The amethyst was held in great esteem in ancient times. The Roman ladies prized their amethysts above all other jewels. It was supposed to cure drunkenness, and it was actaully used, by being applied to the stomach, to dissipate the fumes of wine. The emerald, by many considered the most perfect and beautiful of all the precious stones, was held to possess virtues of an extraordinary character. It was reported to cure epiliptic fits; and, if the malady proved so violent as not to be cured, the emerald broke in pieces. Emeralds were ground into powder, and taken inwardly as medicine. It was said to stop dysentry, and cure the bites of venemous insects.

It was anciently imagined that the opal was related to all the other precious stones, and that it partook of the qualities of all-the fire of the carbuncle, the purple of the amethyst, the green of the emerald, and an agreeable mixture of blue and yellow, black and white. This peculiar beauty was supposed to arise from the mutual reflection of the various colours.

Engraving upon jewels was first practised in the time of Alexander the Great. So anxious was Alexander that his fane might be transmitted to posterity, that he ordered Pyrgoteles to engrave his likeness upon the largest and most precious stone he possessed. One of these gems fell into the hands of the Roman Emperor Augustus, and may have suggested that engraving on an emerald which has preserved to us the only authentic portrait of Christ. This famous and doubly-precious jewel was taken by the command of Tiberius, and became deposited in the treasury of Constantinople, whence it was given by the Emperor of the Turks to Pope Innocent VIII. as a ransom for his brother, then a prisoner in the hands of the Christians.

In the times of barbaric splendour, jewels and precious stones were prostituted to vices and vulgar uses. Cæsar covered his shield with British pearls, and presented it to the Temple of Venus. Mithridates paraded a bust of himself covered with pearls in his triumphal processions. Roman ladies actually wore jewelled bangles round their ankles to give notice of their approach that their servants might assume an attitude of respect. The greatest piece of extravagance, however, was that in which Cleopatra indulged when she dissolved a pearl worth £5,000 in Antony's wine. What kind of drink it made we are not informed; but we shall be justified in regarding it as the very earliest "purl."

There are very few diamonds in the world that exceed two ounces in weight. The diamond of the Rajah of Mattan, in Borneo, is the largest in the world. It weighs 367 carats, or two ounces 169·87 grains troy. The other known diamonds follow in succession, thus :

The largest diamond in the world, that of the Rajah of Mattan, has never been brought to Europe, and little is known respecting it. It is shaped like an egg with an indentation near the smaller end. The Governor of Batavia once offered 15,000 dollars, and two large brigs with their guns and ammunition for this gem; but the Rajah declined the bargain. Indeed he was afraid to do so; for the Malays believed that the diamond possessed the miraculous power of curing all kinds of diseases, and would not allow it to go out of the country. The Orloff diamond, purchased by the Empress Catherine of Russia, originally belonged to the Great Mogul; but was taken among the spoils of Delhi by the Shah of Persia. When the Shah was assassinated in 1747, the crown jewels were plundered and secretly disposed of. The large diamond was afterwards sold at Amsterdam to the Empress of Russia for 50,000 roubles. The Regent, or Pitt diamond has a very curious history. It was stolen from the mines of Golconda, and sold to Thomas Pitt, grandfather of the Earl of Chatham, when that gentleman was Governor of Fort St. George, in the East Indies. After having offered his diamond to several sovereigns, and being unable to find a purchaser, the owner lowered his price, and the Duke of Orleans, then Regent of France, at the solicitation of the famous Law, purchased it for £92,000. Mr. Pitt, however, reserved the fragments taken off in the cutting, and some of these pieces were worth a thousand pounds. The value of this diamond is now estimated at twice the amount paid for it. A rumour had been circulated in England that the Governor of Fort St. George had not come fairly by this jewel, and it was alluded to by Pope in these lines:

"Asleep and naked as the Indian lay,

An honest factor stole the gem away." Mr. Pitt, however, successfully refuted the calumny.

A

When, after the fall of the throne of Louis XVI., the mob insisted that the beautiful works of art and nature hitherto reserved to the enjoyment of the rich and privileged, should be exposed to the gaze of the meanest persons, the Regent diamond was exhibited to the mob. The passer-by who chose to demand a sight of the finest of the ex-tyrant's jewels entered a small room in which the diamond was presented to the citizen in tatters. strong steel clasp fastened the gem to an iron chain. Two policemen in disguise kept a very vigilant watch upon the momentary possessor of the gem, until having held in his hand something worth twelve millions of francs, the raggamuffin took up his hook and his basket at the door, and resumed his scratching of the dung-heap at the street-corner.*

The history of our own Koh-i-noor has been so recently before the public in the newspapers that it is almost needless to repeat it. A few words, however, may not be unacceptable. This diamond is supposed to have been the largest ever known, and the same as seen by Tavernier among the jewels of the Great Mogul. Its weight originally was 900 carats. It was unfor

Madame De Barrera,

tunately put into the hands of a Venetian diamond cutter, who wasted the precious substance so inconsiderately, that though he was unsuccessful in bringing out the qualities of the stone, he reduced it to 280 carats. The descent of the Koh-i-noor has not been very satisfactorily traced; but it is confidently asserted that it belonged to Karna, King of Anga, three thousand years ago. The last Eastern possessor was the famous Runjeet Sing, King of Lahore and Cashmere, from whom it passed into the hands of the English on the annexation of the Punjaub. The following story respecting it is authentic. Having heard that the King of Cabul possessed a diamond, the largest and purest ever known, Runjeet invited the fortunate possessor to his Court, and there, having him in his power, demanded the diamond. The guest, however, had provided himself with a perfect imitation of the jewel, and after some show of hesitation, presented it to Runjeet. The delight of the latter was extreme, but of short duration. It was discovered to be a piece of glass. Runjeet immediately caused the palace of the King of Cabul to be invested, and ransacked from top to bottom. The search would have been in vain had not a slave revealed the hiding place. The Koh-i-noor was found under a heap of ashes! It will be remembered that the Koh-i-noor was re-cut in 1852, the late Duke of Wellington being the first person to place it on the mill. The operation of cutting took thirty-eight days, and involved the use of a steam-engine. This splendid jewel-the property of the Queenis exhibited by Messrs. Gerrard, in the International Exhibition.

ON HEARING A WOUNDED BIRD SINGING IN A TREE.

BY ELIZA COOK.

[ORIGINAL.]

IT seemeth strange that Bird or Bard

Should sit in the sunshine, and merrily sing;
While the Poet-one bears deep anguish-cares,
And the mavis flutters with broken wing.

But we often hear notes rich and clear,

While the tear may flow, and the warm blood gush;
And few will wait to soothe the fate

Of the sorrowing minstrel, or wounded thrush.

Sing on, sweet Bird; let thy whistle be heard,

Thou'st a beautiful perch 'mid the breeze and the light;
Though a red drop start with each pulse of thy heart,
Thy feathers will staunch it, and keep it from sight.

And come, brave Minstrel, rise and take

Thy silvery harp, and tune it again;

Thy spirit may ache till it well nigh break,
But thy sigh will be lost in the dulcet strain.

The Bird falls mute on the grass below;

The Poet has played to the last, and died;

And none shall know the piteous woe

That the feathers and strings have served to hide!

Alms-Giving.

BY HENRY OWGAN, LL.D.

FROM the great public, or rather social, calamities that have recently raised their voices among us, and the promptitude and liberality with which those calls have been answered, the inferences are obvicus that benevolence is alive and active throughout the community, and needs only to be judiciously directed in order to alleviate vast accumulations of human misery; and, at the same time, that our civilization has just reached that acmé which has always and everywhere presented the same abrupt and startling contrasts of colossal wealth and abject destitution. It will be found, however, that-as it usually happens in such cases while public appeals invariably receive a ready and sufficient answer, equally urgent calls of a private and personal character are either ignored altogether, or dismissed with a reluctant and niggardly recognition.

To any sympathizing and enthusiastic person, who has ever undertaken the repulsive task of vicarious begging, these facts must be sufficiently familiar, though the causes of so seemingly strange an anomaly may not perhaps be equally evident. Such an applicant, as soon as he has made himself sufficiently callous to uncivil receptions, sceptical cross-examinations, polite refusals, and rudely conceded benefactions, will find that, on laying his tale of suffering before some Croesus, who is known to give away hundreds and thousands for building churches, endowing schools, and subsidising missionaries, he will, as a general rule, either be taken short with an assurance that individual distresses are never relieved in that quarter, or be met by suspicious inquiries respecting the previous history, the moral character, and industrial capabilities and attainments of the "case in question, accompanied, of course, with insinuations of imprudence and indolence; and should all those questions be satisfactorily answered, will most probably be sent away with the two-hundredth part of what the donor had given the day before to a deputation from some society for the conversion of the Santhals, or the civilization of the Bosjesmans. It is undeniably true that very much of the destitution, seated like a Mordecai at the gate of all modern society, is the result of imprudence, and that such imprudence is punished more rigorously and uniformly than actual and deliberate crime: but, it is also true, that some human beings, inflated with the pride of purse and power, will enforce distinctions which were unmarked by the wise, gentle, large-hearted founder of Christianity. It must be admitted, however, that every individual possessing superfluous wealth has an indisputable legal right to use it how he pleases, and to indulge all prejudices and crochets and antipathies whatsoever; and that the recipients of charity must thankfully receive such "korban" as they can obtain under the circumstances, without presuming to inquire in what proportion it may stand to other and less necessary benefactions; but it must, at the same time, be remembered that it is too much the fashion-as some modern philosopher says to look for fraternal associations at the antipodes, as an excuse for disowning our poor brothers and sisters at home.

Of all the many and various cases to which the assistance of the wealthy can possibly be extended, those which demand the greatest are in general those which obtain the smallest amount of sympathy. They are the cases of those persons upon whom a sort of esprit du corps imposes the necessity of appearing what is called respectable; because, on the maintaining that appearance depends their only chance of ever really becoming so. By them, more than any other class in society, wants and privations-no matter how sore and bitter-must be borne with a patient, heart-breaking, hope-killing dissimulation, if ever they