ooking through fair mirrours of
chrysolites, carbuncles, sapphires, and greene emeraults." Marco Polo
had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-coloured pearls in the
mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that
the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned
for seven moons over its loss. When the Huns lured the king into the
great pit, he flung it away--Procopius tells the story--nor was it ever
found again, though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight
of gold pieces for it. The King of Malabar had shown to a certain
Venetian a rosary of three hundred and four pearls, one for every god
that he worshipped.

When the Duke de Valentinois, son of Alexander VI, visited Louis XII of
France, his horse was loaded with gold leaves, according to Brantome,
and his cap had double rows of rubies that threw out a great light.
Charles of England had ridden in stirrups hung with four hundred and
twenty-one diamonds. Richard II had a coat, valued at thirty thousand
marks, which was covered with balas rubies. Hall described Henry VIII,
on his way to the Tower previous to his coronation, as wearing "a
jacket of raised gold, the placard embroidered with diamonds and other
rich stones, and a great bauderike about his neck of large balasses."
The favourites of James I wore ear-rings of emeralds set in gold
filigrane. Edward II gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour
studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with
turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap parseme with pearls. Henry II wore
jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with
twelve rubies and fifty-two great orients. The ducal hat of Charles
the Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with
pear-shaped pearls and studded with sapphires.

How exquisite life had once been! How gorgeous in its pomp and
decoration! Even to read of the luxury of the dead was wonderful.

Then he turned his attention to embroideries and to the tapestries that
performed the office of frescoes in the chill rooms of the northern
nations of Europe. As he investigated the subject--and he always had
an extraordinary faculty of becoming absolutely absorbed for the moment
in whatever he took up--he was almost saddened by the reflection of the
ruin that time brought on beautiful and wonderful things. He, at any
rate, had escaped that. Summer followed summer, and the yellow
jonquils bloo