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then to tell them that these wall paintings are done on a false principle, because they are good representations of natural objects, and not merely conventional drawings, how are we consistent? And if you tell a young man who designs patterns for carpets that there must be nothing there which would not be, naturally, in such a position-that there must be no sky or flowers there-then you go to make it a mere pavement and nothing better. I should say that the real carpet should take the place of the ancient mosaic. The ancients thought it not amiss to represent whole scenes on their pavement, with sky and rivers, men and horses; and Pliny tells us there were many celebrated men for this sort of work in Greece; but the most celebrated of all was Sosias; and he says among his other works at Pergamus there was a remarkable one which was called "The Unswept House." It was a representation which certainly does not give us a very good idea of cleanliness of domestic habits-of a floor on which all sorts of refuse had been left to lie about, fragments of meat, and the shells of crawfish, and everything which untidy people might leave after their meals. Such were the notions the ancients had of designs. I should, therefore, be inclined to fear that if we began to deal with art upon a too confined basis, and on principles which belong only to one period of the history of art, and if we now insist on their being made the sole basis of artistic education, we shall produce cramped and narrowminded artists, and never enable them to take advantage of the great classical patterns to improve their taste.

In concluding, I think among the greatest errors that language has imposed upon us, there is none more remarkable than the sort of antag onism which is established in common language as between nature and art. We speak of art as being, in a certain manner, the rival of nature and opposed to it; we contrast them-we speak of the superiority of nature, and depreciate art as compared with it. On the other hand, what is art but the effort that is made by human skill to seize upon the transitory features of nature, to give them the stamp of perpetuity? If we study nature, we see that in her general laws she is unchangeable; the year goes on in its course, and day after day pass magnificently through the same revolutions. But there is not one single moment in which either nature, or anything that belongs to her, is stationary. The earth, the planets, and the sun and moon, are not for any instant in exactly the same relation mutually as they were in another instant. The face of nature is constantly changing; and what is it that preserves that for us but art, which is not the rival, but the child, as well as the handmaid, of nature? You find, when you watch the setting sun, how beautiful and how bright for an instant! then how it fades away! the sky and sea are covered with darkness, and the departed light is reflected, as it had been just now upon the water, still upon your mind. In that one evanescent moment a Claude or a Stanfield dips his pencil in the glowing sky, and transfers its hue to his canvas; and ages after, by the lamp of night, or in the brightness of the morning, we can contemplate that evening scene of nature, and again renew in ourselves all the emotions

which the reality could impart. And so it is with every other object. Each of us is, but for the present moment, the same as he is in this instant of his personal existence through which he is now passing. He is the child, the boy, the man, the aged one bending feebly over the last few steps of his career. You wish to possess him as he is now, in his youthful vigor, or in the maturity of his wisdom, and a Rembrandt, or a Titian, or a Herbert seizes that moment of grace, or of beauty, or of sage experience; and he stamps indelibly that loved image on his canvas; and for generations it is gazed on with admiration and with love. We must not pretend a fight against nature, and say that we will make art different from what she is. I will read you some beautiful lines, which show how our art must be derived from nature. I translate them from the excellent poem of Schiller, addressed to artists:

The choicest blossom which the parterre warms,

In one rich posy skillfully combined-
Such, infant Art crept first from Nature's arms:
Then are the posies in one wreath entwined.

A second Art, in manlier bearing, stands,
Fair work of man, created in his hands.

I believe the idea of these beautiful lines is taken from the anecdote which Pliny has preserved to us of the contest of art between Pausias the painter and Glycera the flower-girl; she used to combine her flowers with such exquisite beauty that they excited the admiration of the chief of artists, and he did not think it beneath his art to copy on the canvas the operation of her naturally-instructed fingers; and then she, in her turn, again would rival the picture, and produce a more beautiful bouquet still; and the painter, with his pencil, would again rival her, and produce by his art the same effect as she had done with the flowers of nature. Let us therefore look on art but as the highest image that can be made of nature. Consequently, while religion is the greatest and noblest mode in which we acknowledge the magnificent and all-wise majesty of God, and what he has done both for the spiritual and the physical existence of man, let us look upon art as but the most graceful and natural tribute of homage we can pay to Him for the beauties which he has so lavishly scattered over creation. Art, then, is to my mind, and I trust to you all, a sacred and a reverend thing, and one which must be treated with all nobleness of feeling and with all dignity of aim. We must not depress it; the education of our art must always be tending higher and higher; we must fear the possibility of our creating a mere lower class of artists which would degrade the higher departments, instead of endeavoring to blend and harmonize every department, so that there shall cease to exist in the minds of men the distinction between high and low art. I will conclude with another beautiful sentiment from the same poem:

The bee may teach thee an industrious care;
The worm, in skill, thy master thou must own;
With higher spirits, wisdom thou dost share,
But Art, O man! hast thou alone.

THE DIAMOND AND OTHER PRECIOUS STONES.

BY M. BABINET, OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE.

Translated for the Smithsonian Institution

BY JOHN STEARNS, M. D.

The diamond, called by the Greeks "adamas," from its hardness and infrangibility, has attracted the attention of amateurs of precious stones from the most remote antiquity.

In regard to hardness, says Lucretius, diamonds are placed in the first rank, as they resist the blow of a hammer.

"Adamantina saxa

Prima acie constant, ictus contemnere sueta."

The second of these peculiarities is much more easily contested than the first; for notwithstanding all the fabulous assertions of ancient authors, the diamond, which scratches all other bodies and can be scratched by none, is easily broken by percussion, and is susceptible of cleavage, that is to say, of being readily divided by pressing steadily the sharp blade of a steel instrument in the direction of the natural seams of the stone.

When the rude Helvetians captured the treasures which were found in the tent of Charles the Bold, more sumptuous than those of the King, they divided with their hatchets some of the diamonds of this prince, to the great detriment of their value, as the entire stones were worth much more than the pieces into which they were divided. If we examine the many compilations from the ancients made at the time of the renaissance, we shall find a mass of undigested learning on the subject of gems. Notwithstanding the uncertainty of the names which he applies to many of the precious stones, Pliny is still highly esteemed as a compiler from ancient works now lost, and as an author of the first class. It was he who dared to undertake the composition of a history of nature analogous to what had been done before his time in regard to nations. The term natural history has become so familiar to us that the idea it conveyed, namely, a history of all things that contribute to make up a world, minerals, vegetables, and animals, has almost entirely lost the original magnitude of its signification. And in this connection it is worth while to pause for a moment to remark that science in its progress, as it has become more real and important, has gradually become more and more · modest. Whereas, with the Greeks, the word nature, physis, signified the generation or origin of beings, with us it is restricted to the system

of objects that constitute the physical universe, and is not applied to the occult cause by which they were produced. Here, as everywhere else, science, in order to make real progress, has abandoned ambitious metaphysical speculations for sagacious observations and wild hypotheses for sober facts.

It would be interesting to trace the history of gems in connection with the history of man from the times of Aaron's ephod to those of the pastoral cross of the archbishop of Paris; from the time of the presenting of rubies, sapphires, emeralds, diamonds, topazes, sardonyxes, amethysts, the carbuncle and loadstone, as offerings in the temple of Jupiter and other pagan divinities, to that of an accumulation of wealth of. a similar character prior to the sixteenth century in the treasury of Christian churches.

But, without attempting this labor, we may observe, in passing, that these precious gifts, the offerings of the piety of the faithful, have not always been faithfully preserved. When, during the reformation of Calvin and Luther in Germany, and later, in the time of the French revolution, this votive wealth was delivered over to the civil authorities, it was discovered that many fraudulent substitutions had been made, and that paste had very often been substituted for the primitive gem.

The famous London Exposition of 1851 prided itself upon the possession of the great diamond, the Koh-i-noor, (Mountain of Light,) captured from the Maha-radjas of India, and presented to Queen Victoria. As to the antiquity of this gem, it is asserted that it was worn by Karna, King of Anga, three thousand and one years before our era. Observe the preciseness of this date. I have nothing to offer in objection to it, and am even ready to grant the truth of the assertion; for who can prove the contrary? We can say, however, quite as much in behalf of the truth of the marvelous properties ascribed to precious stones by antiquity and the middle ages, and admit without hesitation, as they have done, the influence of the planets and other celestial bodies. For the cure of all diseases of a moral or nervous character, wherein the imagination exercised a predominant influence, gems were the sovereign remedy. In declaring to a patient that an emerald, placed at the head of his bed, would cure hypochondria, drive away nightmare, calm palpitations of the heart, enliven the imagination, or dissipate mental troubles, success was assured by the faith alone in the efficacy of the remedy. The expectancy of cure in these affections was itself the cause of the cure, and in all of the countless cases in which the moral exercised an influence over the physical, an imaginary cause must produce a real effect. In short, a constant tendency to self-deception of the human mind, which leads us to regard only accidental successes, and to take no note of failures, contributed to maintain the belief in the hidden virtues of precious stones. It is not above half a century since diamonds and other gems were borrowed from rich families to be applied in the cure of local diseases. Care, however, was taken when the jewel was intro

duced into the mouth, for toothache or sore-throat, to secure it by a string, to prevent its being swallowed by the patient.

The study of precious stones, which may seem frivolous when these are considered only as objects of ornament, rises in importance when looked upon in connection with commerce, optics, and mineralogy. The classic Haüy, creator of crystallographic mineralogy, has not disdained to publish a book on precious stones, in which he leaves nothing to be desired in the way of description. In his preface he acknowledges his obligations to M. Achard, mineralogist and lapidary, of Paris; and I ought to say as much for M. Achard, the son, without whose aid I should not have felt able to compose this article.

What is the diamond? It is the most rare and the most priceless of minerals. What is carbon? It is one of the most common of known substances, found in the earth in immense quantities and furnished by all plants and trees in great abundance. The diamond is priceless, since one of pure quality, of the weight of a twenty-five-franc piecethat is, of 125 carats-will have a money value of at least four millions of francs. Now, the value of an equal weight of carbon is scarcely anything, and yet the two are identical; the diamond is only carbon crystallized. Every one knows that if a body is dissolved in a liquid-for example, common salt, saltpeter, sugar, or alum, in water-the deposit left by evaporation of the liquid will present regular geometrical forms. Salt assumes a form identical with that of playing-dice, to which the Greeks gave the name of cubes; saltpeter presents elongated bodies with four flat sides and square ends; sugar takes the form known as rock-candy; and finally alum crystallizes into pointed pyramids. This latter form is precisely the same as that under which nature presents us with the crystals of carbon called diamonds.

As soon as the character of the diamond was discovered, chemistry aspired to emulate nature in producing the gem from carbon; but up to this time science has been baffled in her attempts-nature has not been induced to reveal the secret of her process. These geometrical products of nature, when not worn by attrition, are as smooth and as polished as the finest cut glass. Colored crystals are also produced by nature as well as white ones. The red ruby, the blue sapphire, the green emerald, the yellow topaz, the violet amethyst, and the crimson garnet are all the products of her unrivalled laboratory.

Chemistry, it is true, furnishes us with hundreds of crystals of different forms, according to the character of the substances of which they are composed, and many of them are not found in mineralogy. Nature, however, as if by way of revenge, has produced in the course of ages, and under the influence of actions scarcely as yet recognized, crystals which art, directed by science, has not been able to imitate. Such is emphatically the diamond, and many other minerals not embraced among gems. To the study of these geometrical forms, whether the products of nature or of art, the celebrated Haüy, about the beginning of this

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