The beauty of this gem, depending on its unrivaled luster, is, no doubt, the circumstance which originally brought it into notice, and still continues to uphold it in the public estimation; and certainly, notwithstanding the smallness of its bulk, there is not any substance, natural or artificial, which can sustain any comparison with it in this respect. The vivid and various refractions of the opal, the refreshing tints of the emerald, the singular and beautiful light which streams from the six-rayed star of the girasol, the various colors, combined with high luster, which distinguish the ruby, the sapphire, and the topaz, beautiful as they are on a near inspection, are almost entirely lost to a distant beholder; whereas the diamond, without any essential color of its own, imbibes the pure solar ray, and then reflects it, either with undiminished intensity, too white and too vivid to be sustained for more than an instant by the most insensible eye, or decomposed by refraction into those prismatic colors, which paint the rainbow, and the morning and evening clouds, combined with a brilliancy which hardly yields to that of the meridian sun. Other gems, inserted into rings and bracelets, are best seen by the wearer; and if they attract the notice of the bystanders, divide their attention, and withdraw those regards which ought to be concentered on the person, to the merely accessory ornaments. The diamond, on the contrary, whether blazing on the crown of state, or diffusing its starry radiance from the breast of titled merit, or “in courts of feasts and high solemnities,” wreathing itself with the hair, illustrating the shape and color of the neck, and entering ambitiously into contest with the lively luster of those eyes that “rain influence” on all beholders, blends harmoniously with the general effect, and proclaims to the most distant ring of the surrounding crowd, the person of the monarch, of the knight, or of the beauty.