my wounds; and at death thou receivest me, and closest them all!' Unhappy creatures, at death they will not be closed! Ah, when the sorrow-laden lays himself, with galled back, into the Earth, to sleep till a fairer Morning full of Truth, full of Virtue and Joy,-he awakens in a stormy Chaos, in the everlasting Midnight,-and there comes no Morning, and no soft healing hand, and no Infinite Father!— Mortal, beside me! if thou still livest, pray to Him; else hast thou lost him for ever!"

And as I fell down, and looked into the sparkling Universe, I saw the upborne Rings of the Giant-Serpent, the Serpent of Eternity, which had coiled itself round the All of Worlds, and the Rings sank down, and encircled the All doubly ;-and then it wound itself, innumerable ways, round Nature, and swept the Worlds from their places, and crashing, squeezed the Temple of Immensity together, into the Church of a Burying-ground, and all grew strait, dark, fearful, and an immeasurably extended Hammer was to strike the last hour of Time, and shiver the Universe asunder, . . . WHEN Î

AWOKE.

'My soul wept for joy that I could still pray to God; and the joy and the weeping, and the faith on Him were my prayer. And as I arose, the Sun was glowing deep behind the full purpled corn-ears, and casting meekly the gleam of its twilight-red on the little Moon, which was rising in the East without an Aurora; and between the sky and the earth, a gay transient air-people was stretching out its short wings and living, as I did, before the Infinite Father; and from all Nature around me flowed peaceful tones, as from distant evening-bells.'

Without commenting on this singular piece, we must here for the present close our lucubrations on Jean Paul. To delineate, with any correctness, the specific features of such a genius, and of its operations and results in the great variety of provinces where it dwelt and worked, were a long task; for which, perhaps, some groundwork may have been laid here, and which, as occasion serves, it will be pleasant for us to resume.

Probably enough, our readers, in considering these strange matters, will too often bethink them of that Episode concerning Paul's Costume;' and conclude that, as in living, so in writing, he was a Mannerist, and man of continual Affectations. We will not quarrel with them on this point; we must not venture among the intricacies it would lead us into. At the same time, we hope, many will agree with us in honouring Richter, such as he was; and 'in spite of his hundred real, and his ten thousand seeming faults,' discern under this wondrous guise the spirit of a true Poet and Philosopher. A Poet, and among the highest of his time, we must reckon him, though he wrote no verses; a Philosopher, though he promulgated no systems for on the whole, that Divine Idea of the World'

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stood

stood in clear ethereal light before his mind; he recognized the Invisible, even under the mean forms of these days, and with a high, strong, not uninspired heart, strove to represent it in the Visible, and publish tidings of it to his fellow men. This one virtue, the foundation of all other virtues, and which a long study more and more clearly reveals to us in Jean Paul, will cover far greater sins than his were. It raises him into quite another sphere than that of the thousand elegant sweet-singers, and cause-and-effect philosophes, in his own country, or in this; the million Novel-manufacturers, Sketchers, practical Discoursers, and so forth, not once reckoned in. Such a man we can safely recommend to universal study; and for those who, in the actual state of matters, may the most blame him, repeat the old maxim: 'What is extraordinary try to look at with your own eyes.'

ART. II.-De Adamante Commentatio Antiquaria. Scripsit Mauricius Pinder, Ph. Dr. Bibliothecae Regiae Berolinensis Custos. Berolini, typis Academicis. 1829. 8vo.

MONGST the various treasures of the mineral kingdom, there is, perhaps, none to which society has attached so high a value as to the diamond. The ocean alone hides as precious riches in its depths: jewels and pearls are not only the main objects to which grandeur and vanity aspire as to the most enviable adornments: they maintain an influence more or less visible on the classes and ranks of society; and even the austere moralist, who strives to detach his mind from the treasures of the existing world, is not entirely free from the chains which he endeavours to contemn. Hence we think that Dr. Pinder needed no excuse for having made so isolated a theme as the history of the diamond the object of a particular treatise. We cannot more advantageously show the interesting nature of his performance than by giving a detailed account of its contents.

Dr. Pinder begins with some observations on the small amount of knowledge possessed by the ancients in all branches of mineralogy. The belief that stones grew and produced their like, was very common amongst them. In distinguishing the various kinds of gems, they almost exclusively regarded their exterior qualities, and more particularly their hue, and this may account for the names of many of them being originally expressive of a colour. Of crystallizations the ancients had no knowledge whatever. A few passages are quoted by Dr. Pinder,

wherein

wherein crystallization is mentioned, though in a very rude and superficial manner. The method of examining gems by weight was likewise unknown to them; and it would appear that it was first employed by the Arabs in the thirteenth century. More attention was paid to the coloured reflexion of light than to the clearness and purity of the jewels themselves. We find that Plato, Strabo, Pliny, and Saint Augustine confounded the attractive power of the magnet with that of amber. Saint Augustine, in a passage quoted by Dr. Pinder, is astonished at the magnet,- quod nescio qua insensibili sorbitione stipulam non moveat, et ferrum rapiat.' De Civit. Dei, 1. 21, c. 7.

Of chemical analysis the ancients were, of course, entirely ignorant. If they attended but little to a knowledge of the respective veins from which precious stones were received, this is partly owing to the skilful secrecy of the tradesmen. Pliny mentions India as the country richest in gems: besides which the island of Cyprus enjoyed an early fame for the treasures supposed to be buried in its soil. The author concludes his introductory remarks by pointing at some remarkable instances of Pliny's ignorance in mineralogy; and then proceeds to treat of the diamond itself. He accedes to the usual etymology of the word adamas (adiuas) from the verb dauw, and the privative a, implying something indestructible: whence the same name was, according to the Greek lexicographers and scholiasts, given also to a certain description of the hardest steel; and refutes the opinion of those who would derive the Greek word adauas from the Arabic and Rabbinic word elmas. The Greek adapas is the source of all the modern European names given to this precious stone: sed ita, observes Dr. Pinder, ut gemma olim igne ferroque illaesa, nunc vero non amplius indomita, quasi justo quodam fato illud a quod eam vinci negabat, in principio nominis, amiserit; alluding to the circumstance that Lewis de Berquen was the first who polished one diamond with the aid of another, which he did in the year 1476. The earliest author in whose works the expression diamas occurs, is Albertus Magnus, who died in 1280.

Dr. Pinder observes, that in all passages of the more ancient Greek writers down to the third century before our era, where the expression duas is used, it invariably signifies steel, and never the diamond.* The earliest instance where our gem is expressly mentioned, is in a passage of Theophrastus. This author, having treated at length of those species of minerals which cannot resist the influence of fire, passes

* Homer mentions no jewels whatever,

over to the avgaž (anthrax), which Dr. Pinder proves to be the same with the carbunculus of the Romans, and the ruby or spinel of the modern mineralogists. Anthrax, according to Theophrastus, is incombustible, and of a sexangular form: and strange it is, says he, that this is the case also with the diamond. Pliny seems to follow this passage of Theophrastus when, like him, describing the diamond as a gem of a sexangular form. The combustible nature of the diamond was wholly unknown to the ancients. Pliny and Apollonius Dyscolus went so far as to believe that a diamond placed in the fire does not even grow hot.

The passage next in antiquity to that of Theophrastus, just alluded to, occurs in the Septuagint, Jerem. xvii. 1, where the Hebrew words ketubah beziporen hamir are rendered yeypauμένον ἐν ὄνυχι ἀδαμαντίνῳ.

A further instance is found in a letter of Augustus to Maecenas, quoted by Macrobius. Moreover, Dr. Pinder adverts to Juvenal's 'Adamas notissimus et Berenices

In digito factus pretiosior :'

and to a passage of Seneca the philosopher, where the diamond is not expressly mentioned, but where its extreme hardness and durability is evidently alluded to.

There can be no doubt that these diamonds came from India, Strabo, in his account of India, relying on the authority of Eudoxus, who lived in the second century before our era, mentions only λίθους πολυτελεῖς, πεπηγότας ἐξ ὑγροῦ καθάπερ τὰ κρυ στάλλινα παρ' ἡμῖν ; and, in another passage, λιθίαν κρυστάλλων καὶ ἀνθράκων πολυτελῶν: the diamond is never expressly named. More definite are the expressions used by the anonymous author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, who distinctly mentions diamonds and hyacinths. We must not, however, omit to notice that Bernhardy, in his recent edition of Dionysius Periegetes, prefers taking adduas in this passage for Indian steel. Pliny also assigns India to the diamond as its native place. He calls it the most precious of all things: he describes it as hard and incombustible, and mentions its sexangular form. But, unfortunately, this chapter of Pliny's work is particularly fertile in errors. We know of no such diamonds as those mentioned by him, which must have been found in Ethiopia, near the island of Meroë. Dr. Pinder is of opinion that this mistake may have arisen from the mercantile towns on the coast of Ethiopia, towards the Red Sea, where a flourishing trade in Indian products, and especially in Indian jewels, was carried on. Pliny also mentions Arabia among the native places of the diamond;

diamond; probably from an erroneous notion similar to that which, even in the time of Augustus, supposed cinnamon to be a product of Arabia. Pliny's Cyprian diamonds were, unquestionably, crystals, such as are still found, and of exquisite beauty, near the town of Baffa (Paphos). As to some other accounts given by Pliny on different kinds of diamond, Dr. Pinder shows that he must have been misinformed. Several other of Pliny's remarks betray a high degree of credulity. He, for instance, believes that the diamond could deprive poison of its obnoxious power, relieve the mind from fear, &c.

After the time of Pliny we find that the native place of the diamond became gradually known. For details we must refer the reader to Dr. Pinder's book itself. We shall here allude, in a few remarks, to the use made of the diamond. Pliny, Solinus, Augustine, and Albertus Magnus tell us that sculptors used small fragments, or the dust of diamonds, in executing their designs. The diamond was not employed to cut glass before the sixteenth century; before that time red-hot steel was used for that purpose.

Dr. Pinder does not enter into the question, whether diamonds made part of the ornaments of the high-priest of the Jews. From the passages above adverted to, it will appear, that diamonds were held in the highest estimation at the time of Augustus but according to a passage of Theophylactus, quoted by Dr. Pinder, it is manifest that the art of polishing the diamond was entirely unknown in those days.

It seems, that between the third and eleventh century, the diamond had somewhat lost in its valuation. Solinus praises not its brilliancy, but its medical virtues; and Augustin, Epiphanus, and Bellus, do not mention it as an ornament. Albertus Magnus calls it less pellucid than crystal rock.

In later times, we find diamonds, though rude and unpolished, employed as ornaments: for instance, in the buckle of the mantle of Louis IX., at St. Denys. They were almost numberless in the treasuries of eastern princes. Shehabeddin ben Sam, the fourth Sultan of the Gauride dynasty, who about the year 1200, extended his power over India so far as Delhi, is reported to have had three thousand pounds of diamonds in his possession. In many passages of the old German poems, diamonds are mentioned, particularly as worn in rings.

The diamond is also sometimes referred to by the Italian poets of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: but it is not quite clear whether they allude to our gem, or to the adamas of the ancient Greek poems.

We regret that we cannot further enlarge on Dr. Pinder's remarks,

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