410 JADE. 



bracelets. " If tbe stones which you have presented to me cannot break 

 those which trouble me, they will at least enable me to bear the pain 

 with patience; and since it has procured me this happiness, I should 

 never complain of it." He proceeds to say that these stones will scarcely 

 fail to become a scandal to her, for when he opened the letter containing 

 them before one of his friends, he blushed as scarlet as the ribbon on 

 which they were strung, thus compromising the donor. " But having 

 read your letter over, I soon saw that what appeared to be a love token 

 was a remedy, and that the bracelet was not sent to a suitor, but to a 

 sick man." It is not our purpose here to hold up to ridicule the virtue 

 ascribed formerly to gems worn as amulets. 



The white jades originating in Europe come from Turkey, Poland, and 

 sometimes Switzerland. It is employed in making the handles for dag- 

 gers and sabers. If we are to believe Arlak-hel, of Tauriz, author of a 

 small treatise on precious stones, written in common Armenian, of all 

 kinds of jade that which is veined is but little sought after except by the 

 Turks, who prefer it to others. 



Millin mentions some hatchets of compact feldspar found in the graves 

 of ancient Gauls : these are of the same nature as the ornaments of 

 jadeite of the stone age exhibited at the Musee de Saint Germain, and 

 of which examples have been discovered by M. l'Abbe Cochet, in the 

 Merovingian tombs of Xormandy. 



deferring again to the true or oriental jade, we have said that it pos- 

 sesses extreme hardness; in fact, the mineral scratches glass and even 

 quartz. The Chinese and other orientals work it from choice, and with 

 a delight at overcoming difficulties, which would make us doubt its 

 hardness, if against this incredulity we did not set over the traditional 

 patience of the Asiatic workmen. It is unnecessary to employ diamond- 

 powder in these works, since emery-powder is quite equal to cutting it 

 into any required shape. The ancients valued this stone highly, but in 

 the middle ages it does not seem to be referred to, all knowledge of it 

 being probably lost. It would seem never to have been worked more 

 extensively than in our time, since finished articles come to us frequently 

 from India and China. Haiiy, the mineralogist, relates that the In- 

 dians are skillful in the art of cutting jade, and expresses his wonder at 

 the lightness and delicacy of sculpture which they elaborate from so 

 hard a material, and what may be compared with works executed in 

 alabaster or other less resisting material. 



It is declared in the Notices of Khotan "that the yu is very hard to 

 cut, and that neither steel nor fire make any impression upon it." The 

 Abbe Grosier, in his remarkable work on China, also affirms that the 

 tenacity of fine sorts of jade is so great that the same processes are 

 used in cutting and polishing it as for agate and precious stones. The 

 harder the stone is to cut the more lustrous will be the polish it receives. 

 As thousands of days do not suffice to finish certain pieces of work, the 

 artist$ of the emperor follow each other in succession in the palace 



