for it may fairly be presumed that, carbon
once dissolved, diamonds would be deposited
from the solution. Hence it is not impossible
that the making of diamonds may take
its place some day among the morning
amusements of young ladies, side by side
with bread-seals and embroidery,—that an
improvement on the Koh-i-Noor may be a
toy for children, or an ornament on a
mantel-piece,—and that the coronation-dress
of Prince Esterhazy may be adopted to the
partial extinction of King Charles the Second
and Don Cæsar de Bazan as a stock favourite
at London fancy balls. For it is usually
found in the progress of modern times that a
discovery is not made until it is inevitable:
until the general advancement of science has
brought it within the grasp of many persons,
every one of whom must light upon it before
long. The actual priority which constitutes
what we call a discoverer is due as often as
not to some trivial or seemingly accidental
circumstance which brings a particular fact
under notice to-day instead of to-morrow;
hence we so often hear from different parts
of the world conflicting claims—turning upon
days or hours—to such priority. Hence, also,
the man who first made a diamond would
have little prospect of enriching himself by
the practice of his art in secret, or would be
compelled, at least, to lose no time in doing so.
Others would be certain soon to follow in his
track, and his secret would be one that could
not be long preserved.

Among other natural crystals there are
many that deserve our notice, and that tell
tales of eventful periods in the earth's past
history. The varieties of rock crystal, their
beauties, their curious refracting properties,
and the mediæval legends of spirits
imprisoned within their translucent walls, would
alone furnish matter for an article. I say
mediæval legends, but should add that they
were by no means confined to the period in
which they arose. Not seven years ago, in
London, there was exhibited, with a sort of
semi-publicity, a ball of rock crystal the size
of an orange, which had originally been the
pendant to a chandelier, and which the then
owner had bought for twelve shillings at the
sale of the Countess of Blessington. In this
he stated that spirits were confined, and that
his son—a lad of twelve years old—could see
them, and could obtain from them responses
to any questions that were asked.* People
flocked to the house; and, among others, at
least one bishop of the English Church put
questions to the spirits in the crystal ball.
The owner and his son—it was said to be the
moral purity of the latter that enabled him
to hold intercourse with the unseen world—
emboldened by success, began to enlarge the
sphere of their operations. Not content
with ordinary fortune-telling, and with
accounts of the health and actions of absent
friends of the questioners; not content with
announcing the precise latitude and longitude
in which Sir John Franklin and his followers
were alive and well, but very thin; not
content even with the promulgation of a new
theological scheme;—not content with this, the
son began to call the spirits of the dead into
the piece of crystal, to ask in what planet
they were then located, and to make sketches
of them for inquiring friends. He succeeded
tolerably well as long as he confined himself
to persons recently deceased; but the
boy was not possessed of sufficient historical
knowledge to carry back his drawings
very far; and, not even being aware of
his ignorance, he broke down. Still there
were some staunch believers who stuck to
him through good or evil report; and,
among others, a manufacturer who was
making his preparations for the Exhibition
of eighteen hundred and fifty-one, and
who frequently suspected his workmen of
revealing his trade secrets to his rivals. So
he discharged the workmen whenever the
spirits in the crystal were said to confirm his
suspicions, and was constant in his
applications to the lad who served as medium.
The writer has more than once seen this man
at the house where this abominable folly and
wickedness was carried on, and has heard
him announce his intention of dismissing
persons in his employ, on no better ground than
the answers given by the young jackanapes
who was associated with his father in the
conduct of the imposture.
* See Household Words, Volume the Second, page two
hundred and eighty-five.

This digression leaves space for no more
description of natural crystals, except in the
case of one mineral, likely soon to be of great
importance in the arts, and to which reference
was made in a recent number.† This mineral
is cryolite, a substance found in Greenland in
great abundance; and which contains thirteen
per cent. of aluminium. Cryolite is white,
possessing an obscurely crystalline texture,
and bearing much resemblance to petrified
spermaceti—if such a petrifaction were
conceivable. It is tasteless, insoluble in water,
and its crystalline form appears to have been
assumed in cooling from a state of fusion. It
is a double fluoride of aluminium and sodium;
and the former of its two metallic bases,
although hitherto only separated from it by
the use of more sodium—a method too
expensive for general application—will, doubtless,
in the course of a short time, be obtained
more cheaply: either by a new method of
reduction, or by a less costly process than
that already followed for the procuring of
sodium itself. In the meanwhile, cryolite is
put to the question, both ordinary and
extraordinary, in many laboratories; and the
chemist who tortures it successfully, and who
extracts, by simple means, the precious metal
it conceals, will not only make a fabulous
fortune for himself, but will open a new era
of prosperity to Greenland's icy mountains.
† Volume Fourteen, page five hundred and nine.