ess, from its shaky texture, for ornamental purposes on a large
scale, though for ornaments of the smaller kind, such as boxes, vases,
and plates, it has been pronounced unrivalled. "At Zoeblitz, in Upper
Saxony," says Professor Jamieson, "several hundred people are employed
in quarrying, cutting, turning, and polishing the serpentine which
occurs in that neighborhood; and the various articles into which it is
manufactured are carried all over Germany. The serpentine of Portsoy,"
he adds, "is, however, far superior to that of Zoeblitz, in color,
hardness, and transparency, and, when cut, is very beautiful."

It is really a pretty stone; and, bad as the evening was, it was by no
means one of the worst of evenings for seeing it to advantage _in situ_,
or among the rolled pebbles on the shore. The varnish-like gloss of the
wet imparted to the undressed masses all the effect of polish, and
brought out in their proper variegations of color, every cloud, streak,
and vein. Viewed in the mass, the general hue is green; so much so, that
an insulated stack, which stands abreast of one of the beds, a
stone-cast in the sea, has greatly the appearance, at a little distance,
of an immense mass of verdigris. But red, gray, and brown are also
prevailing colors in the rock; occasional veins and blotches of white
give lightness to the darker portions; and veins of hematitic and deep
umbry tints, variety to the portions that are lighter. The greens vary
from the palest olive to the deepest black-green of the mineralogist;
the reds and browns, from blood-red to dark chocolate, and from
wood-brown to brownish-black; and, thus various in shade, they occur in
almost every possible variety of combination and form,--dotted, spotted,
clouded, veined,--so that each separate pebble on the shore seems the
representative of a rock different from the rocks represented by almost
all the others. Though not much of a mineralogist, I could have spent
considerably more time than the weather permitted me to employ this
evening, in admiring the beauties of this beach of _marbles_, or
rather,--as the real name, derived from those gorgeous, many-colored
cloudings, that impart a terrible splendor to the skins of the snake and
viper family, is not only the more correct, but also the more poetical
of the two,--this beach of _serpentines_. I had, however, to compromise
matters between the fierce wind and rain and the pretty rocks and
pebbles, by adjourning to the