in a ring. George III. was presented by a London watchmaker with a ring thus ornamented. The watch was less than a silver twopence, and, though it had no fewer than one hundred and twenty-five several parts, it weighed only seven grains more than five pennyweights. Charles V. of Germany and James I. of England had rings ornamented in a similar manner, and in the museum at Dresden is to be seen a ring set with a minute horologe.
Amongst the accumulations of elegant and fantastic shapes into which stone and precious metal are found carved in the cabinets of princes or in national museums may often be seen rings whose claim to preservation is that they have been worn by some illustrious departed. In the public library at Wolfenbüttel are Luther’s marriage and doctor’s rings; and Prince Metternich’s museum at Königswart contains the rings of Matthæus Corvinus and John Sobieski.
A few miscellaneous references to art, verbal and pictorial, where this ornament is introduced being given we shall cease to task the reader’s patience. In the hands of a true artist it is a powerful instrument in telling his story or heightening its effect. When Hogarth wished to expose the wretched passion of avarice in an old man who had bartered away the happiness of his daughter for an alliance with a titled spendthrift, he painted him drawing off the ring from her fingers as she lay in the extremity of death. To shift the scene—Dante deemed not fully apparelled the hand of the woman, to whom he offered the precious incense of his verse, without a ring on one of the tender fingers. And in Suckling’s gay lines on a wedding he must needs exhibit to us the slender delicacy of the bride’s hand by telling us that—
Her finger was so small the ring
Would not stay on which they did bring,
It was too wide a peck.
In Massinger’s “Great Duke of Florence” we see Sanazarro, a prisoner in a lonely chamber of a country mansion, conveying to the Duchess of Urbino, who was in love with him, a notice of his condition and a petition that she would intercede for his liberation, by writing on a pane of glass with a ring which she had given him, and flinging it at her feet. Remember the astonishment of the poor fisherman and his wife when Undine left their cottage for a moment and came back with two costly rings, one of which she gave to the storm-bewildered knight Sir Huldbrand, and kept the other herself.
We must now shut down the lid upon the contents of our little casket, which have been collected and arranged for the inspection of our friends in the hope that it would afford them pleasure to see grouped together some of the
That on the stretched forefinger ofjewels
That on the stretched forefinger of all time
Sparkle for ever.
Our fair readers especially will appreciate the purpose to which little Dan Cupid is putting the ring in our tailpiece.
NOW, AND THEN.
Birds are singing on bush and tree,
Singing a thousand loves and joys;
Once, it was music sweet to me,
Now, it seemeth only noise.
Ah! life’s music fled with him!
Roses are blooming—once they were
Fairest of wonders that Nature weaves;
Now their perfume makes faint the air,
And, to me, they are just—red leaves.
Ah! life’s beauty faded with him!
Daylight dies, and the stars arise,
Not as of old with hope-giving light;
Then, they looked loving, like human eyes,
Now, they are pitiless, cold, and bright.
Ah! the brightest star has set!
