DIAMOND. The Diamond, contrary to the usual custom, must, in pursuance of my plan, occupy the last place in the list of gems, as furnishing no engravings of either ancient or modern artists, and merely supplying an instrument for the execution of their work. Under the Romans it was a well-known gem, and then, as now, "the most precious of all possessions." Before the age of Pliny it had been seen only on the hands of kings, and of but a few among them; but the spread of commerce under the Cæsars had by that time made the gem much more common. Six varieties were then known, of which the Indian, “sometimes as large as a hazel-nut kernel,” and the Arabian were clearly real diamonds, as is shown by their peculiar form, described by Pliny as that of two whippingtops united at their broadest ends. Their silvery or steely lustre is also noticed, a striking peculiarity of the stone in its natural state. The Macedonian found in the gold-mines of Philippi was no larger than a cucumber-seed. The Cyprian, of a bluish tinge, "vergens in æreum colorem," and the Siderites, of a steel colour and very heavy, were doubtless Sapphires, for they could be drilled by means of another Diamond. Pliny goes on to repeat the jeweller's fiction as to the infrangibility of the Diamond, a thing still believed in by most people, who cannot separate the ideas of hardness and of resistance to violence, and who do not choose to try so costly an experiment on any Diamond in their own possession. But in reality, from the fact of this gem being composed of thin layers deposited over each other parallel to the original faces of the crystal, it can easily be split by a small blow in the direction of these lamina. This property may be exemplified by the following story. The London jeweller intrusted with the re-cutting of the Koh-i-noor was displaying his finished work to a wealthy patron, who accidentally let the slippery and weighty gem slip through his fingers and fall on the ground. The jeweller was on the point of fainting with alarm, and, on recovering himself, reduced the other to the same state by informing him, that, had the stone struck the floor at a particular angle, it would infallibly have split in two, and been irreparably ruined. A few particulars about this famous Diamond will not be out of place here. Tavernier saw it two centuries ago in the treasury of the Great Mogul, not many years after its discovery. Its weight in the rough, of above 800 carats (according to report), had been reduced to 284 by the bungling Italian lapidary who had The Hindoos have a superstition that this Diamond brings certain ruin upon the person or the dynasty possessing it. It was turned up by a peasant when ploughing in a field forty miles distant from Golconda, and was in its rough state fully as large as a hen's egg. Its first owner, in the 17th century, was a Hindoo Rajah, from whom it was wrested by Meer Jomlah, who presented it to Aurungzebe. Immediately after this fatal gift the Mogul race degenerated, each of his successors being more vicious and incapable than his father, until, in 1739, the last, Mohammed Shah, was deprived of the unlucky jewel in the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah. The conqueror was assassinated by his generals on his return to Persia, and the Diamond fell into the hands of one of the conspirators, Ahmed Shah Doorannee, the founder of the Affghan monarchy, the history of which is a perpetual series of crimes and massacres. From the last of this line, Shah Soojah, it was ex torted by Runjeet Singh (by the means of starving him into a surrender of the treasure), when he had fled to the Khalsa Court for refuge from Dost Mohammed. Runjeet, in order to break the spell and avert the fatal influence from his race, bequeathed at his death the stone to the Temple of Juggernaut ; but his successors would not relinquish the baleful treasure, which in a very few years worked its destined effect-the ruin of his family and the subjugation of the Punjaub to the English. Lord Dalhousie presented it to Queen Victoria in 1849; within ten years the usual consequences of its possession were manifested in the Sepoy revolt, and the all but total loss of India to the British crown, in which beams its malignant lustre, lighting up a very inauspicious future for that region, fated apparently ever to be disturbed by the measures of ignorant zealots at home and the plots of discontented and overpowerful allies in the country itself. brought it to the ugly and unskilful form in which it appeared when brought to this country. This was a rude hemisphere facetted all over, apparently intended for the rose shape. The re-cutting in London was effected by the means of a small steam-engine, under the superintendence of two artists brought expressly from Holland, where alone the business is kept up. This operation cost 80007., and has brought the stone to the form of a perfect brilliant, with a wonderful augmentation of its beauty and lustre, though with a reduction of the weight to 180 carats. Even now it remains one of the largest Diamonds in Europe-Halphen's Star of the South weighing 244 carats; the great Russian 193; the Pitt or Regent of France 136; the Austrian, a yellow stone, 139; and Hope's blue Diamond, the most beautiful, though least valuable of all, 177. The art of cutting and polishing this gem was only discovered in the fifteenth century by Louis de Berghem, and the first ever cut by him was a large one belonging to Charles the Bold, and weighing 55 carats. It is now known as the Sancy diamond, which, having been found on his corpse on the field of Granson, was sold for a few francs, and, after passing through innumerable vicissitudes. (having once been swallowed by a faithful servant when beset by robbers, and afterwards extracted from his dead body by his master), now reposes amongst the French regalia. Vossius says, the largest Diamond known in his time, the end of the sixteenth century, was that bought by Philip II. of Carlo Affetati, of Antwerp, in 1559, for 80,000 crowns. Its weight was but 47 carats. It was then a prevalent opinion that the stone lost its lustre by too much warmth, whence persons 7 The Rajah of Mattan in Borneo is indeed reported to possess a Diamond of the incredible weight of 367 carats, but no particulars are given of its water, perfection, &c. It may, after all, like the famous on going to bed used to place their diamond rings on a marble-table, or in a glass of water. Hence they were always worn by the Romans in their native form, a fine instance of which is afforded by the clasp of the mantle of Charlemagne set with four large Diamonds, the legacy doubtless of his Imperial predecessors. The Herz Collection also possessed a well-formed octahedral Diamond of about one carat, set open in a massy gold ring of indubitable antiquity. The largest cabinets of Europe do not, to my knowledge, boast any such specimens, yet I have met with another example in the collection of an acquaintance, where a small pyramidal Diamond, showing distinctly its primitive form and silvery lustre, was set in its original ring of thick gold-wire, to all appearance a work of Roman times. Such was the "Adamas notissimus et Berenices In digito factus pretiosior" that graced the hand of the imperious lady of the days of Juvenal; the stone being prized, not for its beauty, but for its rarity and extraordinary virtues as an amulet. It is said that the Austrian Diamond was originally bought for a mere trifle at a curiosity-shop at Florence, being considered merely a yellow crystal. Brazil furnishes a vast supply of these yellow stones, the most unpleasing of all the tints the Diamond assumes, for to my taste the pink and blue varieties are much superior in beauty to the colourless. The ancient Indian mines of Golconda and Cooloun (where at the time of Tavernier's visit more than 60,000 men, women, and children were employed in the various operations of the search), in the Madras Presidency, have long since been exhausted; the only source of the supply at present is Brazil, and even there the tract containing the gravel (cascalhao) in which they are found is nearly worked out. But I have little doubt that in a short time the market will be flooded with an importation of this gem from Australia, even greater than that which took place on the first discovery of the Brazilian mines. As in that region they were accidentally discovered in the search for gold, so in Australia a few have already made their appearance under similar circumstances; one of which, as well as a Sapphire from the same locality, has been deposited in the Museum of Geology, Jermyn-street. And this important discovery will doubtless take place when the gravel of the Australian diggings comes to be turned over by persons having eyes for other things besides gold flakes and nuggets. The observation made of old by Pliny, that the diamond always accompanies gold, has been fully borne out by the experience of succeeding ages," for in most deposits of alluvial gold have they been found in greater or less abundance, even in Wicklow and in Cornwall. 8 This stone is highly electric, attracting light substances when heated by friction, and, as we have already noticed, has the peculiarity of becoming phosphorescent in the dark after long exposure to the rays of the sun. The ancients also ascribed magnetic powers to the Diamond in even a greater degree than to the loadstone, so much so that they believed the latter was totally deprived of this quality in the presence of the Diamond; but this notion is quite ungrounded. Their sole idea of magnetism was the property of attraction; therefore, seeing that the Diamond possessed this for light objects, the step to ascribing to it a superiority in this as in all other respects over the loadstone was an easy one for their lively imaginations. A letter has appeared this summer (1859) from a miner, speaking of the vast quantity of small Rubies found in washing the "dirt," some hundreds of which were in his own possession. 9 In the British Museum, among the native Diamonds, is " an octahedral Diamond attached to alluvial gold." |