reach it, fading away more speedily than the flower of the same name." This flower, it may be observed by the way, was not our hyacinth, a bulb derived from Persia, but the blue iris, or fleur-de-lys, the blossom of which only lasts one day. This appears from Ovid's elegant account of the origin of the plant from the blood of the youth Hyacinthus: "Flos oritur formamque capit quam lilia, sinon "Formed like the lily, springs a flower to light, But we shall prove in the next chapter that the ancient Hyacinthus stone, as described by Solinus, agrees with the modern Sapphire in every particular; and we have already seen that the stone, now called the Jacinth or Hyacinthe by the French, was the Lyncurium of the ancient lapidaries. Pliny mentions the suitableness of the Amethyst for engraving on, “sculpturis faciles," a sufficient proof that no species of this stone was the Hyacinthus, which Solinus calls the hardest of all gems, and only to be touched by the diamond point. Intagli of all dates and of every style of work occur on Amethyst, but usually on the light-coloured sort: in fact, an engraving on a dark stone may be suspected of being modern. I have, however, seen a fine Greek intaglio-a full-faced head of Pan, the Mask of Terror-upon a dark-coloured Amethyst, the antiquity of the work of which could not be called in question. Scarabei also, both Egyptian and Etruscan, are by no means uncommon in this stone; and Roman intagli in it are The lilium was probably the white fleur-de-lys, to judge from the Italian giglio. The giglio of the arms of Florence was first argent, but after changed to gules, to typify, according to the satirical remark of Dante, the constant civil wars of that State, "per division fatto vermiglio." sufficiently abundant, though not often of good execution. Amongst the finest gems of the Pulsky Collection is the head of a Syrian king upon a large and pale Amethyst, engraved with the artist's name, NEAPKHE. Small heads and busts, in full and half relief, are frequently found executed in this stone, which have probably served to complete statuettes in the precious metals. The name (though probably derived from the Indian word for the stone) was by the fanciful Greeks interpreted as if formed from their own language, and thereupon the gem was invested by them with the virtue of acting as an antidote to the effects of wine. Hence the point of the epigram prefixed to this article, and also of another by Asclepiades or Antipater of Thessalonica (Anth. ix. 752) :— "A Bacchante wild, on amethyst I stand, The drunken goddess needs must sober be." Even in the last century this stone was still held in high estimation. Queen Charlotte's necklace of well-matched Amethysts, the most perfect in existence, was valued at 20007.; at present it would not command as many shillingsso great has been the importation of late years of German Amethysts and Topazes (purple and yellow crystals of quartz), which are dug up in endless abundance in the Siebengeberge on the Rhine, where they are cut and polished by steam-power, and despatched into all parts of Europe to be made up into cheap articles of jewellery. They are also found plentifully about Wicklow in Ireland. These occidental stones are of a deep, rich hue, but have very little brilliancy formerly they were largely imported from the East Indies, and these were light coloured, but extremely lustrous. In modern usage the Amethyst is the only stone it is deemed allowable to wear in mourning." We may here mention the true oriental Amethyst, a very rare and valuable stone, being in reality a purple Sapphire, but its purple has little of the redness of that seen in the common Amethyst, but is rather an extremely deep shade of violet. It is a much rarer stone than the ordinary blue Sapphire, but very inferior to it in beauty. English jewellers absurdly call the common Amethyst, if very bright and of two shades of colour, by the name of Oriental; a stone which in reality few of them in all their experience have ever met with. SAPPHIRUS - HYACINTHUS. That the Sapphirus of the ancients was our Lapis-lazuli is evident from Pliny's description of it, "that it came from Media (whence the entire supply of the latter stone is brought at the present day), that it was opaque, and sprinkled with specks of gold, and was of two sorts, a dark and a light blue. It was considered unfit for engraving upon in consequence of its substance being full of hard points," the small spots of yellow pyrites which appear like gold. Nevertheless both intagli and camei of Roman times are frequent in this material, but rarely any works of much merit, though fairly executed Roman intagli in it are not scarce. With Italian 7 The colour of the Amethyst can be dispelled by a careful roasting in hot ashes. Hence, in the last century, when it was desirable to obtain a suite of stones of the same shade, the jewellers were able to obtain this result by subjecting the several Amethysts to the heat for a greater or shorter time until they were all brought to the same tint of purple. I have lately seen a very fine head of Alexander the Great on a large and fine-coloured Lapis-lazuli, the reverse of the stone engraved with full-length figures of Apollo artists it has been a great favourite, especially for engravings in relief and for busts of statuettes. A serious defect of this substance is that it loses its beautiful azure by exposure to heat and moisture, and assumes a chalky appearance. It has been asserted positively by many modern mineralogists that the Cyanos of Pliny was our Sapphire; but this opinion is by no means borne out by his description of the former stone:-"The Cyanos shall be noticed separately, a favour granted to the blue colour lately mentioned (when speaking of the blue Jasper). The best sort is the Scythian, then the Cyprian, and last of all the Egyptian. It is very largely imitated by staining crystal, and a certain king of Egypt has the credit of having first discovered how to tinge crystal this colour. This also is divided into male and female. There is sometimes gold-dust seen within it, but different from that in the Lapis-lazuli. For in the latter the gold shines in points or specks amidst the azure colour." This mention of the gold-dust visible in the Cyanos, but only occasionally, would lead us to conclude it to have been the clear variety of the Lapis-lazuli, pieces of which sometimes occur entirely free from the golden specks of pyrites. Or it may have been a bright crystal of the sulphate of copper, which is in its native state nearly transparent and of considerable hardness. Whatever it was, it was clearly not the present precious stone the Sapphire. What the Cyanus really was may be deduced from the following passage of Theophrastus (c. 55):-" And as there is a Red Ochre both natural and artificial, so is there a Cyanos, also both produced naturally, and made by art like that and Venus with Cupid. The intaglio was pronounced by the German antiquaries to be coeval with Alexander; to me it rather appears middle Roman work, and may have been the ornament of a lady of the family Macriana. manufactured in Egypt. Of the Cyanos there are three kinds the Egyptian, the Scythian, and a third the Cyprian. The Egyptian is the best for thick-bodied paints, but the Scythian for those of a diluted kind. The Egyptian is produced artificially, and the writers of the history of their kings mention this also, which of the kings it was who first made a fused Cyanos in imitation of the natural stone; and that this mineral used to be sent as a present from other regions. From Phenicia, however, it was brought as a fixed tribute, an appointed quantity of Cyanos, so much in its native state and so much calcined. The persons who grind up paints say that the Cyanos produces of itself four different shades of colour; the first, made from the thinnest pieces, being the lightest; the second, from the thickest, giving the darkest tint." This artificial substance is the blue enamel so universally used in all Egyptian works in terracotta, and made by fusing together copper filings, powdered flint, and soda, in imitation of the native sulphate of copper, the true Cyanos. This antique invention is still employed by enamellers under the name of Zaffre. HYACINTHUS = SAPPHIRE. ̔Α σφραγὶς ὑάκινθος, ̓Απόλλων δ' ἐστὶν ἐν αὐτῇ Anthol. ix. 751. 66 Engraved on Hyacinth fair Daphne shines With Phoebus; say to which his heart inclines? That the Hyacinthus of the ancients was the Sapphire of the present day will be clear to every mineralogist who will carefully consider the minute description of the gem given by Solinus:-" Amongst those things of which we have spoken (in Ethiopia) is found also the Hyacinthus of a shin |