It is curious to look back on the fatal and universal prevalence of Gold-worship recorded in the history of our race, from the period when Midas became its victim, and the boy chased the rainbow to find the pot of treasure at its foot, to the days when the alchemist offered his all a burnt-sacrifice on the altar; until we reach the present time, when, although the manner of its worship has changed, the old idolatry remains in spirit the same. One or two anecdotes illustrative of the passion for gold worship may not prove uninteresting. The hero of our first story--a chamois hunter of the Swiss Alps--was for many years of his existence an absolute stranger to the very sight of gold. He dwelt in a mountain _chalet_, in the peaceful contentment and ignorant simplicity of former ages--lord of his own freedom, with nature for his domain, and the fleet Alpine creatures for his subjects. By some unfortunate chance, however, he moved from this dwelling of his youth to the lower station, and to the side of a pass frequented by travelers, toward whom he was frequently called on to exercise hospitality. His services, and the shelter he afforded, were occasionally rewarded with gold, which, though of little actual use or value to him as a circulating medium, gradually exercised a strange fascination over his senses. He hoarded his guineas with the doting fondness of the miser; he looked on them with more pleasure than on the faces of his children; and listened to their chink with a satisfaction no tone of household love or sweet Alpine melody could call forth. It chanced one day that our hunter, in the pursuit of his ordinary avocation, perceived a tiny cavern hitherto unknown to him. He determined to snatch his hasty noon-tide meal beneath its shelter; and in order to enter it, rolled away a block of stone which obstructed the mouth of the fissure. To his amazement, its removal presented to his gaze a deep hole, in which a vase of considerable size was buried. He removed the lid, and there, fresh and bright, as if they were coins of yesterday, glittered before his eyes a multitude of golden pieces, mingled with shining particles of ore. A buried treasure of long past ages was before him. He took them in his hands, he clutched them, he stared at them with half-insane delight. He could not, of course, divine how they had come to be in their strange hiding-place, or who had placed them there; the inscriptions on them--the figure of a lamb, which some few bore--said nothing to him. There appeared to be something supernatural in the discovery, and he wasted all the remaining hours of daylight beside the vase; then, as night closed in, he replaced both the lid and the stone above the treasure. He did not attempt to remove it to his own dwelling, nor did he breathe a word of his discovery even to his wife; but from that hour he became an altered man.