amber in water for three days and make her drink the water: if she is unchaste she will be immediately forced to void it. Selenites, Moonstone, sympathises with the waning moon, its colour increasing or diminishing as the moon waxes or wanes. During the increase of the moon its virtue is to cure consumption. During her wane it hath wonderful potency, causing people to predict future events. If washed in water and the water taken in the mouth, if you think on future events, whether they are to happen or not: if they must happen, they will be so fixed in your mind, that it will be impossible for you to forget them; but if they are not fated to take place they will immediately vanish away from the mind. Topazius, a gem of golden colour tending to green, and of very great lustre (the Peridot). The Oriental kind despises the file; the Occidental, of a greener hue, yields to it. If thrown into boiling water the water cools immediately; hence this gem cools lust, calms madness and attacks of frenzy, cures the piles, augments wealth, averts sudden death, and gives favour with the great. Turquois is useful for riders. As long as one wears it his horse will not tire, nor throw him. It is also good for the eyes and averts accidents. Hydrinus, called also Serpentine, is good against rheumatism and all complaints arising from excess of moisture. It restores dropsical persons to health, if they stand in the sun, holding it in the hand, for three hours, as it makes them discharge all the water in the form of a very stinking sweat. But great care must be had in using it, as it extracts not merely the foreign moisture but also the natural and radical moisture of the body. Taken inwardly it cures the stone, and venomous bites, likewise it drives away serpents. Zumemo lazuli, or Zemech, or Lapis-lazuli, called for its beauty lapis cœlestis and stellatus, as prepared by physicians, cures melancholy. From this also is made the colour called Azure Ultramarine. Ziazia, so called from the place of its discovery, is black, white, 5 This is an exact definition of and yellower Chrysolite, and the the difference between the harder softer and greener Peridot. and other colours mixed together. It renders the wearer litigious, and makes him see terrible things in his sleep. Camillo, though copying Marbodus, mentions for the first time of any author I know, the name Sapphirine as applied to the Hyacinth. Like Marbodus, he divides the Jacinthus into three classes-the Citrini, of lemon colour; the Granatici, of the colour of the pomegranate flower; and the Veneti, of a sky-blue, which feel colder in the mouth than the other two sorts, and are also called Water-gems, Aquatici. (The French still call the pale Sapphire, Saphir d'eau.) Some also added a variety named Sapphirine; and this was considered the best, being of a brilliant and cœrulean colour. The Citrini showed a slight tinge of red. The Veneti were the least valuable of all, having a little red mixed with a faint lemon colour; but yet they were the hardest of all, and could scarcely be cut by the Diamond. This description shows a strange confusion of some sorts of pale Sapphires with Balais and Spinel Rubies, Oriental Topazes, and in fact all the varieties of the precious Corundum, all added to the blue Hyacinth of the Romans, which we see in this passage distinguished by the epithet. Sapphirinus, or azure, which afterwards became its sole designation. GEMS OF THE APOCALYPSE. In St. John's vision of the New Jerusalem, the walls of the City are built out of twelve courses of precious stones. These are not arranged in the order of the gems in the High Priest's breastplate, as one would have naturally expected from so truly Hebrew a writer, but according to their various shades of colour, in the following succession, beginning from the foundation: 1. Jaspis, dark opaque green. 2. Sapphirus, Lapis-lazuli, opaque blue. 3. Chalcedon, an Emerald of a greenish blue. 4. Smaragdus, bright transparent green. 5. Sardonyx, white and red. 6. Sardius, bright red. 7. Chrysolite, our Topaz, bright yellow. 8. Beryl, bluish green. 9. Topazion, or Peridot, yellowish green. 6 10. Chrysoprasus, a darker shade of the same colour. 11. Hyacinthus, Sapphire, sky-blue. 12. Amethystus, violet. This arrangement of colours is not taken from that of the rainbow, the order of which is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, violet. This minute acquaintance with the nicest shades of colour of the precious stones will strike the reader with the greater force if he should endeavour to arrange from memory, and by the aid of his own casual knowledge, twelve gems, or even a smaller number, according to their respective tints. He will find his attempt result in error, unless he has had a long and practical acquaintance with the subject. This image, however, of the Holy City built of precious stones is not original, as it is found in the prayer of Tobias (certainly a much older composition than the Apocalypse, whatever may be its date). In our version it stands thus:-"Jerusalem shall be built up of emeralds, sapphire, and all precious stones; her walls, and towers, and battlements of most fine gold . . . . The streets of Jerusalem shall be paved with carbuncle, beryl, and stones of Ophir." St. John frequently alludes elsewhere to the colours of gems in a very technical manner. "He that sat on the great throne" was like the Jaspis and the Sardius, and crowned by a rainbow like the Smaragdus; and the light of the City is like a "very precious stone, a jaspis crystallized," that is, the green of the Jasper, brilliant and transparent as crystal, by which he probably means to express the true Emerald. Such allusions, such exact knowledge of points 6 Chrysoprasus is probably an error for Chrysopaston, a dark blue studded with gold, as Marbodus has understood it, by which substitution all the shades of blue will follow each other. only to be acquired by persons dealing in such articles, or otherwise obliged to acquire a technical knowledge of them, could not have been found in a Galilean fisherman, unless we choose to cut the knot with the sword of verbal inspiration. Here then may be another argument in support of the opinion that St. John the Evangelist and St. John Theologus were two different persons. It is hardly possible that the writer could have had in view any tradition derived from the Persians (the former masters of his native country), of the seven concentric walls of Ecbatana, coloured in the following order-black, white, red, blue, yellow, silver, gold, which probably had reference to the several planets, so important in the religious system of the Chaldees. The twelve colours were no doubt intended to have some fanciful analogy to the names of the twelve tribes; but Marbodus ingeniously applies them to the several virtues of the members of the Christian Church in the following poem, of which I give the original, as an interesting example of medieval Latin verse. MARBODI REDONENSIS EPISCOPI, Prosa de xii lapidibus pretiosis in fundamento Cælestis Civitatis positis. Cives cælestis patriæ Regi Regum concinite Sapphirus habet speciem cælesti throno similem, Jaspis colore viridi præfert virorem fidei, Pallensque Calcedonius ignis habet effigiem: Virtutem fert fidelium occulte famulantium. Smaragdus virens nimium dat lumen oleaginum : Sardonyx constat tricolor, homo fertur interior, Jacinthus est coeruleus colore medioximus, Amethystus præcipuus decore violaceus ; 7 Griseo for Chryseo, golden. |