shall hope to touch
upon all the more important points, and in some cases to go into
details.

Concentrating our attention upon the central facet, its clear ray
strikes the imagination, and forthwith transports us to a distant age
and climate. The air is full of lazy warmth. A full-fed river,
glassing the hot blue sky, slides in long curves through a low-lying,
illimitable plain. The rich earth, green with mighty crops, everywhere
exhales upward the quivering heat of her breath. An indolent,
dark-skinned race, turbaned and scantly clothed, move through the
meadows, splash in the river, and rest beneath the palm-trees, which
meet in graceful clusters here and there, as if striving to get
beneath one another's shadow. Dirty villages swarm and babble on the
river's brink.

Were there leisure to listen, the diamond could readily relate the
whole history of this famous valley. For the stone was fashioned to
its present shape while the thought that formed the Pyramids was yet
unborn, and while the limestone and granite whereof they are built lay
in their silent beds, dreaming, perchance, of airy days before the
deluge, long ere the heated vapors stiffened into stone. Some great
patriarch of early days, founder of a race called by his name, picked
up this diamond in the southern desert, and gave it its present form;
perhaps, also, breathed into it the marvellous historical gift which
it retains to this day. Who was that primal man? how sounded his
voice? were his eyes terrible, or mild? Seems, as we speak, we glimpse
his majestic figure, and the grandeur of his face and cloudy beard.

He passed away, but the enchanted stone remained, and has sparkled
along the splendid march of successive dynasties, and has reflected
men and cities which to us are nameless, or but a half-deciphered
name. It has seen the mystic ceremonies of Egyptian priests, and
counts their boasted wisdom as a twice-told tale. It has watched the
unceasing toil of innumerable slaves, piling up through many ardent
years the idle tombs of kings. It has beheld vast winding lengths of
processions darken and glitter across the plain, slowly devoured by
the shining city, or issuing from her gates like a monstrous birth.

But whither wander we? Standing in this hotel of modern Boston, we
must confine our inquiries to a far later epoch than the Pharaohs'.
Step aside, and let the old history sweep past, like the turbid and
eddying current of the mysterious Nile; f