After Babel [pp. 401-407]

AFTER BABEL.
and rows on her hlead and hair, woven
inlto wreaths, hanging firom her ears, en circling her neck, arms, and fingers, and
decor-ating every part of her dress. He
gravely censures this prodigal display,
and appraises it at no less than./3o0,ooo
English money. Thle Britannic pearls
were held in peculiar estimation by these
dainty classes for thleir pinky hue (at the
present day those that come firom the
Persian Gulf are golden yellow, and the
Ceylon specimens mostly white), and the
Oriental ones seem for a time to have
gone more or less out of fashion.
In the Middle Ages Scotch pearls were
celebrated on the Continent of Europe
for their size and beauty, and their peculiar pink hue was highly esteemed by
forei,gn magnates. The famous hussar
jacket of Prince Esterhlazy, entirely covered wvith pearl embroidery, was largely
indebted for its sheeny splendor to Scottish pearls. But pearls are firagile things
to hold, and at court festivities the prince's
track in a waltz was marked by a shower
of pear ls scattered profusely around him,
while the wear and tear incidental to
donninig and doffing the precious garment was a small fortune to his valet,
who gathered up the cast-off wvealthl of
his master from the dressing room floor.
Even the New Jerusalem was revealed
to St. John under the figure of an edifice
with twelve doors, each of which was a
single pearl.
Jane Taylor, in " The Philosopiher's
Scales," tells of
"A sword with gilt trappings. and brilliants begirt,"
that weighled less
"Than one good potato just washed from the dirt."
Here, then, one kind of costly treasure
is useless by the very fact of being one's
own, when humblnler property pays for its
possession by rough service.
A rich nobleman was once showing a
friend a great collection of precious
stones, whose value wvas almost beyond
counting. There were diamonds and
pearls and rtubies and gems firom almost
every country on the globe, which had
been gathered by their possessor withl the
greatest lablor and expense. "And yet,"
he remarked, "they yield me no income." His friend replied that hle had
two stones whichl cost him about ten
florins each, yet they yielded him an income of two hundred florins a year.
In much surprise the nobleman desired
to see the wonderful stones, when the
man led him down to his mill and pointed
to the toilinggray mzillstones. They were
laboriously crushing the grain into snowy
flour for the use of hundreds who depended on this work for their daily bread.
The two dull, homely stones, did more
good in the world, and yielded a larger
income, than all the noblleman's jewvels.
GEORGE B. GRIFFITH.
AFTER BABEL.
T is refreshing now and then to mieet
wvithl a writer lwho, vlhile evidently
versed in all the scientific questions of
the day, yet learns from all their discoveries how truly wonderful are the sacred
writings. All this one feels while reading "The Builders of Babel," by M'Coutsland, in whlich, beginning with the dispersion at Shinar, hle has traced, down to
VOL. XXXVI.-26*
our time, the history of Noah's three sons,
Ham, Shlem, and Japhet, and lie slhows
how wonderfully prophecy has been fulfilled withl regard to them.
He believes in a plur-ality of races,
holding that "it is the doctrine of a divine
creation, as con tradistiinguishled firom the
scientific dogma of the unity of race and
the propagation of the various species of
1876.]
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