The Pastors of the flocks Have on their sacerdotal albs, which pass In front divided o'er their golden frocks, Clasp'd with aigraffes of pearl. In the review of the oriental hordes, Armida's car is thus described, Her car, that glorious as Aurora's roll'd, With rubies, pearls, and hyacinths glisten'd clear. Among those who passed the Egyptian prince, were: The Islanders with fleecy curls, Whose homes are compassed by th' Arabian waves; By whom those shells which breed the Persian pearls Are dived and fish'd for, in their green sea caves. The name of the gem is used in rare fashion in picturing the enchanted wood through which Rinaldo wanders: Impearl'd with manna was each fresh leaf nigh. And twice does the sweat of the human face become pearly in the poet's imagination: once when Armida watches Rinaldo sleeping: The living heat-dews that impearl'd his face, She with her veil wiped tenderly away. In the second instance, speaking of Armida, the poet says: She dies Of the sweet passion, and the heat that pearls, Yet more her ardent aspect beautifies. Thomson sees pearls only in the dew-impearled earth, and one must admit, after looking upon the liquid globules hanging in rows from the spreading twigs of trees before the morning sun has found them in their shaded quarters, that the pendent spheres are suggestive, and that the poet's eye needs but little assistance from imagination to see in them the soft round gems of the ocean. In all ages, prose and fiction have treated of pearls as a form of exceeding preciousness and a chief evidence of high station and barbaric splendor. The lute of poetry has held few additional strings. Modern writers have added little to the imaginations of the ancients. All the changes made by successive poets have been rung on the tears, dew-drops, and beauty's teeth, handed down from long ago. The wide ranges of the pearl's modest worth, exalted purity, and singular beauty, yet remain to illustrate the thoughts of future genius. Imagination has not yet brooded often over the humble and distorted creatures, whose gnarled and twisted forms, lying among their myriad shapely brethren are evidence of a precious sacrifice of self to leave a heritage of beauty; nor dreamed of the silent acres under turbulent waters where the gem, one day to adorn the neck of beauty or the diadem of royalty, is reared. What play for imagination lies between the birth of this creation of one of the humblest of Earth's creatures, and the high placement to which it rises as soon as it is discovered.