Lollia Paulina, wife of the Emperor Caligula, possessed a great chain of emeralds and pearls worth over two million dollars. It is significant of the change in Roman ways that when the Emperor Tiberius once more tried to limit the wearing of gold rings, he based his restrictions not on rank but on riches. Only those citizens might wear rings of gold, he ordained in 22 A.D., whose fathers and grandfathers held property valued at 400,000 sesterces, $30,000. Jewels, always the property, were thus also made the prerogative of the hereditary rich. _The Tide Turns East_ Back from Rome toward the East, with Constantine in 330 A.D., went the flowering fashions, to riot in Byzantine luxury. The Eastern capital exceeded the declining city of the West—abandoned to the barbarians and the popes—in extravagance, in colorful splendor and elaborate intricacy of design. Gems, no longer reserved for the showy jewels, were sewn upon or woven into the very texture of garments. In all this profusion, the crafts of the goldsmith and the lapidary continued to thrive, while the West lapsed into the dun rigor of the Dark Ages. _Eastward to India_ More or less independently of the western world, the making of fine jewels flourished in the Far East. In India the code of Manu, about 250 B.C., prescribed fines for poor workmanship and for the debasing of gold. A drama of the same period describes a workshop, with pearls and emeralds, and artisans to grind lapis lazuli, to cut shells, to pierce coral, and to make the filigree and other ornaments that have persisted in that part of the world unchanged to our day. The lavishness of Oriental potentates is proverbial; their collections of precious stones and elaborate jewels have been as fabulous as their incalculable wealth. Almost to our own generation birthday gifts to maharajahs have matched the monarch’s weight in gold or precious stones. At the greatest period of Indian art, during the reign of the Mogul Shah Jehan, who died in 1666, the art of jewelry almost merged with that of architecture. In addition to the celebrated Peacock Throne, the Shah built the Great Mosque at Delhi, and at Agra the Pearl Mosque and that triumph of beauty, the Taj Mahal. This was erected as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahall, who was called “the adornment of the palace.” In addition to the designs and patterns of tile that are a feature of the mosques, the Taj Mahal is adorned with great treasures of the East: “jasper from the Punjab, carnelians from Broach, turquoises from Tibet, agates from Yemen, lapis lazuli from Ceylon, coral from Arabia, garnets from Bundelcund, diamonds from Punnah, rock crystal from Malwar, onyx from Persia, chalcedony from Asia Minor, sapphires from Colombo.” It took thirteen years, from 1632 to 1645, to collect these treasures and construct the mausoleum. The memory of a woman may be buried there, but a beauty beyond description is preserved. _Over the Chinese Wall_