May 1, 1864] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



ON GRANITE AND ITS USES. 445 



any of the other statues that enchant the world, may he subtracted, 

 ■without subtracting more than a fraction of their beauty ; and 

 that fraction make; the marble statue more beautiful than the 

 plaster cast or the clay model, not because marble is rarer than 

 plaster or clay, but simply because it is more beautiful. If the 

 diamond had organised itself out of some unique and precious kind 

 of matter, which alone, of all kinds of matter in the universe, could 

 form it, then all praise to the self-made diamond ! But if omnipotent 

 hands carved it out of the most common, most unlikely, and most 

 intractable materials, then, whilst the diamond is none the less beau- 

 tiful, all the more honour redounds to its wonderful Carver. It might 

 have been the law of nature that graceful shapes and gorgeous colours 

 should have been found attached only to the rarest materials ; as gold, 

 for example, is a rare thing, as well as a very beautiful thing. But the 

 law of nature is exactly the opposite. There is not, I am sure, a more 

 beautiful object than a soap-bubble, none which a youthful Shakspere or 

 Milton is more likely to have tried his creative hand at producing. No 

 flower or precious stone excels it in symmetry. None equal it in colour, 

 and yet it is but a distended drop of muddy water. The secret of its 

 beauty lies in its workmanship, and the same law applies to all created 

 things. 



This is the lesson I am anxious to enforce. It is, I will not say, a 

 childish, but it is a childlike fancy to expect to find beautiful objects 

 constructed out of a rare material, which by its very nature confers 

 beauty upon all that is made of it. When we become men, and put 

 away childish things, what we do find in the physical universe, are 

 materials the most common, but workmanship the most rare. Herein 

 lies a great argument, little appreciated, for man being a worker. 

 Herein lies a justification of Industrial Museums, and a divine warrant 

 for Chairs of Technology. Thus the material of the gems is the 

 cheapest and rudest. To judge from the condition of the mass of this 

 material at the earth's surface, its tendency is to assume ungraeelul and 

 dull-coloured forms. The clay or flint, or chalk or charcoal, does not 

 help the artist, but must be subdued into beauty, and etherealised by 

 him. It is susceptible of being made beautiful, and does not refuse to 

 be beautified ; but it is shy and coy," and reluctantly submits to be 

 glorified. Not till it is touched by the finger of God does it start into 

 shapes and hues of beauty ; but how surpassingly beautiful they are ! 

 The crystallised gems are modelled into figures so perfect, that the 

 mathematician wonders at their almost ideal symmetry. Some, like 

 Sal-Gem, are exquisitely-squared cubes. The jacinth rises in four- 

 angled campanile-like towers ; the emerald in stately six-sided obelisks ; 

 the amethyst in twelve-sided cathedral-like spires ; the diamond 

 assumes a most symmetrical shape, like that of a double Egyptian 

 pyramid ; the topaz inclines obliquely, like the leaning Tower of Pisa ; 

 the garnet, the most many-sided of them all, shows twelve or twenty- 



