A brilliant writer has lately stated that “Pictures, gems, china, bronzes, _bric-à-brac_ of every sort, rare shawls, rare engravings, and even rare fruits, flowers, and dogs are steadily tending upwards in value, as if their price depended upon a want and not a caprice. It is the most curious illustration of the unchangeableness of the law which governs even caprices that we are acquainted with; and tends to indicate that the desire for the rare, which we all notice and smile at, in bibliopoles, antiquarians, entomologists, and every variety of the genus collector, is not an exceptionable eccentricity, but a permanent attribute of the human mind, though only noticed in those who have wealth to indulge in some unusual or splendid form. It is like the desire of accumulation, one of the passions, and not one of the mere tastes of men; and may be relied on in business, almost as certainly as self-interest, vanity, or ambition.” The relative worth of the diamond has never been better described than by the following lines from the pen of an able English author:-- “It is in truth the very essence of property. It is riches condensed and wealth secured; too small to be seen by the midnight burglar; too easily hid to be seized by the tyrant; and too quickly carried away to be wrested from the patriot exile or torn from the hunted outlaw. In vain would the vanquished monarch strive to remove his bags of gold, or transport his territorial domains; but a diamond is an empire made portable, with which he might purchase a better kingdom, and mount a prouder throne. Had the treasure of Crœsus been invested in brilliants he might have founded a nobler Lydia beyond the reach of his Persian invader.” THE EMERALD. “The emerald burns intensely bright, With radiance of an olive light; This is the faith that highest shines, No need of charity declines, And seeks no rest and shuns no strife, In working out a holy life.” MARBODEUS. THE EMERALD. Dutens and several others who have written upon gems and precious stones during the last two centuries, have asserted that the ancients were unacquainted with the true emerald, and that Heliodorus, when speaking nearly two thousand years ago of “gems green as a meadow in the spring,” or Pliny, when describing stone of a “soft green lustre,” referred to the peridot, the plasma, the malachite, or the far rarer gem, the green sapphire. But the antiquary has come to the rescue with the treasures of the despoiled mounds of Tuscany, the exposed ashes of Herculaneum and Pompeii, and now exhibits emeralds which were mounted in gold two thousand years before Columbus dreamed of the New World, or Pizarro and his remorseless band gathered the precious stones by the hundred-weight from the spoils of Peru.