May 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST, 



ON GRANITE AND ITS USES. 437 



they shone with a light of their own, bright as that of the sun, hut 

 bright, nevertheless, with an unearthly splendour. By all nations they 

 were accounted as things regal and sacred, to be employed in the adorn- 

 ment of great kings and queens, and dedicated to the service of God. 

 And if their employment was not restricted to such purpose, they were 

 at least kept apart from ordinary uses. The songs and legends and fairy 

 tales of all peoples are full of references to them, and the poets never 

 wearied of comparing them to the rainbow and the azure sky. to flowers, 

 and to stars. Even in these utilitarian and technological clays, how much 

 poetry lurks under the word " gem." We call a precious stone a gem. 

 The word signifies literally a " bud or flower," and most happily denotes 

 those crystals which shoot up and bud forth from their stony beds with 

 forms as graceful, though of a different type of symmetry, and with 

 colours as varied and as gorgeous as those of flowers. The amethysts, 

 emeralds, garnets, and topazes are the true flowers of the granite, not 

 the insignificant lichens which the botanist alone counts as belonging to 

 the granitic Flora. Well, then, could not technology spare those un- 

 fading flowers to the poet 1 Has any but a jeweller an interest in 

 knowing how diamonds are cut with lead wheels by patient Dutchmen ? 

 or how ingenious Germans convert, by chemical processes, common 

 pebbles into choise carnelians and onyxes, or how clever Brazilians 

 change yellow into red topazes 1 Because, in these later days, there has 

 arisen a Sir Humphry Davy with a wonderful lamp, are we to forget 

 Aladdin, and his more wonderful lamp, and the trees he saw loaded 

 thick with emeralds and rubies ? or because the Queen had to send a 

 great army and take a mighty Indian fort before she could get her 

 Koh-i-noor diamond, are we to lose sight of the simple way in which 

 Sinbad's friends the merchants procured their sackfuls of the biggest 

 gems from the Valley of Diamonds ? Accepting the protest which we 

 have heard against the flowers of the crystal world being regarded as 

 mere substitutes for money, or useful because they can be converted into 

 pretty studs and buttons, or clasps and brooches, and the heads of pins ; 

 and remembering that the same protest is made against every branch of 

 industrial science, I wish to consider the two cardinal objections that are 

 made to the modern zealous encouragement of utilitarian art as compared 

 with the ancient mere sufferance of it. The one objection is, that our 

 modern utilitarianism is stealing from us our imaginations ; the other 

 and more serious objection, is, that it is killing our consciences. 



It is contended, then, that in these days the spirit of utilitarianism 

 has so possessed the minds of the people that all interest is likely to be 

 lost in imaginative art. The true object of technology, it is said, if you 

 translate the word into plain English, is how to answer most smnptu- 

 ously the cpiestions, " What shall we eat ? " and " What shall we drink ? " 

 and " Wherewithal shall we be clothed ?" and the only fine arts it fosters 

 are those which increase the sensual comforts and gratify the vanity of 

 that luxurious animal man. The spirit, too, of its teaching is affirmed 



