Читать книгу The History and Poetry of Finger-rings - Charles Eugene Edwards - Страница 4

Table of Contents

1. Interest and Importance attaching to Rings; Shakspeare’s Ring; Earl Godwin. 2. Words symbolum and ungulus. 3. Ring-money. 4. Rings in Mythology; Theseus; Prometheus Inventor of the First Ring. 5. Seals from the Scarabæus. 6. Rings in Greek Urns. 7. Judah and Tamar; Alexander. 8. Ring a Symbol of Fidelity, Eternity, and of the Deity. 9. Roman Rings. 10. Rings in German Caverns. 11. Rings of the Gauls and Britons. 12. Anglo-Saxon Workers in Metal. 13. Ladies’ Seal-rings. 14. Substance, Forms and Size of Rings; Number, and on what fingers worn; Pearls; Carbuncle; Death’s-head Rings. 15. Law of Rings. 16. Order of the Ring. 17. Rings found in all places. 18. Persian Signets. 19. Value of ancient Rings. 20. Love’s Telegraph, and Name-rings; Polish Birth-day Gifts. 21. Rings in Heraldry. 22. Rings in Fish. 23. Riddle. 24. Ring misapplied. 25. Horace Walpole’s Poesy on a Ring.

§ 1. A CIRCLE, known as a finger-ring, has been an object of ornament and of use for thousands of years. Indeed, the time when it was first fashioned and worn is so far in the past that it alone shines there; all around is ashes or darkness.

This little perfect figure may seem to be a trifling matter on which to found an essay; and yet we shall find it connected with history and poetry. It is, indeed, a small link, although it has bound together millions for better for worse, for richer for poorer, more securely than could the shackle wrought for a felon. An impression from it may have saved or lost a kingdom. It is made the symbol of power; and has been a mark of slavery. Love has placed it where a vein was supposed to vibrate in the heart. Affection and friendship have wrought it into a remembrance; and it has passed into the grave upon the finger of the beloved one.

And, though the ring itself may be stranger to us, and might never have belonged to ancestor, friend or companion, yet there can be even a general interest about such a slight article. For instance, a few years ago a ring was found which had belonged to Shakspeare, and must have been a gift: for the true-lover’s knot is there. Who would not desire to possess, who would not like even to see the relic? There is reason to suppose that this ring was the gift of Anne Hathaway, she “who had as much virtue as could die.” And we must be allowed to indulge in the idea that it was pressing Shakspeare’s finger when those lines were inscribed “To the idol of mine eyes and the delight of my heart, Anne Hathaway:”

“Talk not of gems, the orient list,

The diamond, topaz, amethyst,

The emerald mild, the ruby gay:

Talk of my gem, Anne Hathaway!

She hath a way, with her bright eye,

Their various lustre to defy,

The jewel she, and the foil they,

So sweet to look Anne hath a way.

She hath a way,

Anne Hathaway,

To shame bright gems Anne hath a way!”[1]

We shall find many interesting stories connected with rings. By way of illustration, here is one:

In a battle between Edmund the Anglo-Saxon and Canute the Dane, the army of the latter was defeated and fled; and one of its principal captains, Ulf, lost his way in the woods. After wandering all night, he met, at daybreak, a young peasant driving a herd of oxen, whom he saluted and asked his name. “I am Godwin, the son of Ulfnoth,” said the young peasant, “and thou art a Dane.” Thus obliged to confess who he was, Ulf begged the young Saxon to show him his way to the Severn, where the Danish ships were at anchor. “It is foolish in a Dane,” replied the peasant, “to expect such a service from a Saxon; and, besides, the way is long, and the country people are all in arms.” The Danish chief drew off a gold ring from his finger and gave it to the shepherd as an inducement to be his guide. The young Saxon looked at it for an instant with great earnestness, and then returned it, saying, “I will take nothing from thee, but I will try to conduct thee.” Leading him to his father’s cottage, he concealed him there during the day; and when night came on, they prepared to depart together. As they were going, the old peasant said to Ulf, “This is my only son Godwin, who risks his life for thee. He cannot return among his countrymen again; take him, therefore, and present him to thy king, Canute, that he may enter into his service.” The Dane promised, and kept his word. The young Saxon peasant was well received in the Danish camp; and rising from step to step by the force of his talents, he afterwards became known over all England as the great Earl Godwin. He might have been monarch; while his sweet and beautiful daughter Edith or Ethelswith did marry King Edward. “Godwin,” the people said in their songs, contrasting the firmness of the father with the sweetness of the daughter, “is the parent of Edith, as the thorn is of the rose.”[2]

§ 2. The word symbolum, for a long time, meant a ring; and was substituted for the ancient Oscan word ungulus.

§ 3. In examining ancient rings, care must be taken not to confound them with coins made in the shape of rings.[3] The fresco paintings in the tombs of Egypt exhibit people bringing, as tribute, to the foot of the throne of Pharaoh, bags of gold and silver rings, at a period before the exodus of the Israelites. Great quantities of ring-money have been found in different countries, including Ireland.[4]

Egyptian Ring-money.Celtic Ring-money.

The ancient Britons had them. That these rings were used for money, is confirmed by the fact that, on being weighed, by far the greater number of them appear to be exact multiples of a certain standard unit. Layard mentions[5] that Dr. Lepsius has recently published a bas relief, from an Egyptian tomb, representing a man weighing rings of gold and silver, with weights in the form of a bull’s head; and Layard also gives a seeming outline of the subject, (although its description speaks of “weights in the form of a seated lion.”) It is presumed that these rings are intended for ring-money; the fact of weighing them strengthens this idea; and see Wilkinson’s Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians, (revised,) ii. 148-9.

§ 4. We not only find rings in the most ancient times, but we also trace them in mythology.

Fish, in antediluvian period, were intelligent, had fine musical perception and were even affectionate. Thus, in relation to Theseus, the Athenian prince: Minos happened to load Theseus with reproaches, especially on account of his birth; and told him, that, if he were the son of Neptune, he would have no difficulty in going to the bottom of the sea; and then threw a ring in to banter him. The Athenian prince plunged in, and might have been food for fishes, had they not, in the shape of dolphins, taken him upon their backs, as they had done Arion, and conveyed him to the palace of Amphitrite.[6] It is not said whether she, as Neptune’s wife, had a right to the jetsam, flotsam, and lagan, to the sweepings or stray jewelry of the ocean; but she was able to hand Theseus the ring, and also to give him a crown, which he presented to the ill-used lady Ariadne, and it was afterwards placed among the stars.

And, coupled with mythology, we have, according to the ancients, the origin of the ring. Jupiter, from revenge, caused Strength, Force and Vulcan to chain his cousin-german Prometheus to the frosty Caucasus, where a vulture, all the livelong day, banqueted his fill on the black viands of his hot liver. The god had sworn to keep Prometheus there (according to Hesiod[7]) eternally; but other authors give only thirty thousand years as the limit. He who had punished did, for reasons, forgive; but as Jupiter had sworn to keep Prometheus bound for the space of time mentioned, he, in order not to violate his oath, commanded that Prometheus should always wear upon his finger an iron ring, to or in which should be fastened a small fragment of Caucasus, so that it might be true, in a certain sense, that Prometheus still continued bound to that rock. Thus, as we have said, came the idea of the first ring, and, we may add, the insertion of a stone.[8]

While some writers, under this story, connect Prometheus with the first ring, Pliny still says that the inventor of it is not known, and observes that it was used by the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Persians and Greeks, although, as he thinks, the latter were unacquainted with it at the time of the Trojan war, as Homer does not mention it.[9]

It has however been said that Dschemid, who made known the solar year, introduced the use of the ring.[10]

Touching Pliny’s notion of the antiquity of rings, there is, in Southey’s “Commonplace Book,” (second series,[11]) the following quotation from “Treasurie of Auncient and Moderne Times,” (1619:) “But the good olde man Plinie cannot overreach us with his idle arguments and conjectures, for we read in Genesis that Joseph, who lived above five hundred yeares before the warres of Troy, having expounded the dreame of Pharaoh, king of Ægypt, was, by the sayde prince, made superintendent over his kingdom, and for his safer possession in that estate, he took off his ring from his hand and put it upon Joseph’s hand.” ... “In Moses’s time, which was more than foure hundred yeares before Troy warres, wee find rings to be then in use; for we reade that they were comprehended in the ornaments which Aaron the high priest should weare, and they of his posteritie afterward, as also it was avouched by Josephus. Whereby appeareth plainly, that the use of rings was much more ancient than Plinie reporteth them in his conjectures: but as he was a Pagan, and ignorant in sacred writings, so it is no marvell if these things went beyond his knowledge.”

It is pretended that seal-rings were an invention of the Lacedemonians, who, not content with locking their coffers, added a seal; for which purpose they made use of worm-eaten wood, with which they impressed wax or soft wood; and after this they learned to engrave seals.[12]

§ 5. Cylinders, squares and pyramids were forms used for seals prior to the adoption of ring-seals.[13] These settled with the Greeks into the scarabæus or beetle, that is to say, a stone something like the half of a walnut, with its convexity wrought into the form of a beetle, while the flat under surface contained the inscription for the seal. The Greeks retained this derivable form until they thought of dispensing with the body of the beetle, only preserving for the inscription the flat oval which the base presented, and which they ultimately set in rings. This shows how ring-seals came into form. Many of the Egyptian and other ring-seals are on swivel, and we are of opinion that the idea of this convenient form originated with the perforated cylindrical and other seals, which were, with a string passed through them, worn around the neck or from the wrist.[14]

The sculpture of signets was, probably, the first use of gem engraving, and this was derived from the common source of all the arts, India.[15] Signets of lapis lazuli and emerald have been found with Sanscrit inscriptions, presumed to be of an antiquity beyond all record. The natural transmission of the arts was from India to Egypt, and our collections abound with intaglio and cameo hieroglyphics, figures of Isis, Osiris, the lotus, the crocodile, and the whole symbolic Egyptian mythology wrought upon jaspers, emeralds, basalts, bloodstones, turquoises; etc. Mechanical skill attained a great excellence at an early period. The stones of the Jewish high-priests’ breast-plate were engraved with the names of the twelve tribes, and of those stones one was a diamond(?). The Greek gems generally exhibit the figure nude; the Romans, draped. The Greeks were chiefly intaglios.

It is generally understood that the ancients greatly excelled the moderns in gem engraving, and that the art has never been carried to the highest perfection in modern times. Mr. Henry Weigall, however, states that “this supposition is erroneous, and has probably arisen from the fact of travellers supposing that the collections of gems and impressions that they have made in Italy are exclusively the works of Italian artists; such, however, is not the case, and I have myself had the satisfaction of pointing out to many such collectors, that the most admired specimens in their collections were the works of English artists.”[16]

§ 6. Rings have been discovered in the cinerary urns of the Greeks. These could hardly have got there through the fire which consumed the body, for vessels still containing aromatic liquids have also been discovered in the urns. It is very possible they were tokens of affection deposited by relations and friends. Such remembrances (as we shall see) are found in the graves of early Roman Christians.

The idea that rings in Roman urns were secretly and piously placed there, is strengthened by the fact that it was contrary to the laws of Rome to bury gold with the dead.[17] There was one exception to this rule, which appears odd enough to readers of the nineteenth century, namely, a clause which permitted the burial of such gold as fastened false teeth in the mouth of the deceased, thus sparing the children and friends of the dead the painful task of pulling from their heads the artificial teeth which they had been accustomed to wear. It seems strange to find that these expedients of vanity or convenience were practised in Rome nearly two thousand years ago.

Maffei[18] gives a description and enlarged illustration of a gold ring bearing a cornelian, whereon is cut the story of Bellerophon upon his winged horse, about to attack the chimera; and also a small but exquisite urn of porphyry, which contained funeral ashes and this ring. These were found in the garden of Pallas, freed man of Claudius; and Maffei reasonably makes out that the ring had belonged to him. Bellerophon is said to have been a native of Corinth, and Pallas was from that city. Nero became emperor mainly through Pallas, and yet he sacrificed the latter to be master of his great riches. These relics thus possess much interest. Although a freed man, merely as such, had no right to wear a gold ring, yet Pallas gained the office of Prætor, and so was entitled to one. (In Plutarch’s Galba, the freed man of the latter was honored with the privilege of wearing the gold ring for bringing news of the revolt against Nero.)

§ 7. In the unpleasant story of Judah and Tamar, we see that the former left in pledge with the latter his signet.[19] This, most likely, was in the shape of a ring, although such signets were often worn from the wrist: for, in this case, he also pledged his bracelets.

In the Scriptures, the signet ring is frequently named; and Quintus Curtius tells us that Alexander wore one. After his fatal debauch, and finding himself past recovery, and his voice beginning to fail, he gave his ring to his general, Perdiccas, with orders to convey his corpse to the temple of Ammon. Being asked to whom he would leave his empire, he answered, “To the most worthy.”[20]

§ 8. The ring was generally the emblem of fidelity in civil engagements; and hence, no doubt, its ancient use in many functions and distinctions.[21] A ring denoted eternity among the Hindoos, Persians and Egyptians; and Brahma, as the creator of the world, bears a ring in his hand. The Egyptian priests in the temple of the creative Phtha (Vulcan of the Greeks) represented the year under the form of a ring, made of a serpent having its tail in its mouth—a very common shape of ancient rings. Although Jupiter is often figured with attributes of mighty power, yet he is seldom coupled with a mark of eternity. There is, however, a gem (an aqua-marine, engraved in hollow) of this deity holding a ring as the emblem of eternity.[22]

Pythagoras forbade the use of the figures of gods upon rings, lest, from seeing their images too frequently, it should breed a contempt for them.[23]

It has been attempted to connect with a ring the consecration of a circle, as emblematical of the Deity. Over the door of a Norman church at Beckford, in Gloucestershire, England, is a rude bas-relief, representing the holy cross between the four beasts, used as symbols of the Evangelists. The “human form divine” appears to have been beyond the sculptor’s power; he has made a ring. The others are an eagle, lion, and bull.[24]

§ 9. The Romans distinguished their rings by names taken from their use, as we do.[25] The excessive luxury shown in the number worn, and the value of gems and costly engraved stones in them, and the custom of wearing lighter rings in summer and heavier in winter, are among the most absurd instances of Roman effeminacy, (as we shall hereafter more particularly show.)[26] The case in which they kept their rings was called Dactylotheca. No ornament was more generally worn among the Romans than rings. This custom appears to have been borrowed from the Sabines.[27] They laid them aside at night, as well as when they bathed or were in mourning, as did suppliants. However, in times of sorrow, they rather changed than entirely put them aside; they then used iron ones, taking off the gold rings.[28] It was a proof of the greatest poverty, when any one was obliged to pledge his ring to live. Rings were given by those who agreed to club for an entertainment. They were usually pulled off from the fingers of dying persons; but they seem to have been sometimes put on again before the dead body was buried.

There is no sign of the ring upon Roman statues before those of Numa and Servius Tullius. The rings were worn to be taken off or put on according to festivals, upon the statues of deities and heroes, and upon some of the emperors, with the Lituus ensculped, to show that they were sovereign pontiffs.

This lituus is a crooked staff; and the Roman priests are represented with it in their hands. They, as augurs, used it in squaring the heavens when observing the flight of birds. It is traced to the time of Romulus, who being skilled in divination, bore the lituus; and it was called lituus quirinalis, from Quirinus, a name of Romulus. It was kept in the Capitol, but lost when Rome was taken by the Gauls; afterwards, when the barbarians had quitted it, the lituus was found buried deep in ashes, untouched by the fire, whilst every thing about it was destroyed and consumed.[29] Emperors appropriated to themselves the dignities of the office of high priest,[30] and hence this priestly symbol upon their medals, coins and signets. Although it is a common notion that the pastoral staff of the Church of Rome is taken from the shepherd’s crook, it may be a question whether it did not take its rise from the lituus?

Brave times those Roman times for lawyers—or patrons, as they were called. Their clients were bound to give them the title of Rex; escort them to the Forum and the Campus Martius; and not only to make ordinary presents to them and their children or household, but, on a birth-day, they received from them the birth-day ring. It was worn only on that day.[31]

There were rings worn by flute-players, very brilliant and adorned with a gem.

In the Sierra Elvira, in Spain, more than two hundred tombs and an aqueduct were discovered. Several skeletons bore the rings of Roman knights; and some of them had in their mouths the piece of money destined to pay the ferryman Charon.[32] These skeletons crumbled into dust as soon as they were touched. What a perfect subject for a poem by Longfellow!

Roman stamps or large seals or brands have been found of quaint shapes. Some of them are in the form of feet or shoes. Drawings of them appear in Montfaucon. They were fashioned to mark casks and other bulky articles. Caylus gives an illustration of a ring in the form of a pair of shoes, or rather, the soles of shoes.[33]

Pliny observes that rings became so common at Rome, they were given to all the divinities; and even to those of the people who had never worn any. Their divinities were adorned with iron rings—movable rings, which could be taken off or put on according to festivals and circumstances.

§ 10. At Erpfingen in Germany, remarkable stalactical caverns have been discovered. Every where, and especially in the lateral caves, human bones of extraordinary size, with bones and teeth of animals, now unknown, have been discovered, and there, with pottery, rings were found.

§ 11. Rings were in use among the Gauls and Britons, but seemingly for ornament only. They are often found in British barrows. Anglo-Saxon rings were common.[34] William de Belmeis gave certain lands to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and at the same time directed that his gold ring set with a ruby should, together with the seal, be affixed to the charter for ever. The same thing was done by Osbart de Camera, he granting to St. Paul’s, in pure alms and for the health of his soul, certain lands; giving possession by his gold ring, wherein a ruby was set; and appointing that the same gold ring with his seal should for ever be affixed to the charter whereby he disposed of them.[35]

Anglo-Saxon kings gave rings to their wittenagemot and courtiers, and they to their descendants.

§ 12. In metals the Anglo-Saxons worked with great skill. We read of the gold cup in which Rowena drank to Vortigern. So early, perhaps, as the seventh century, the English jewellers and goldsmiths were eminent in their professions; and great quantities of other trinkets were constantly exported to the European Continent. Smiths and armorers were highly esteemed, and even the clergy thought it no disgrace to handle tools.[36] St. Dunstan, in particular, was celebrated as the best blacksmith, brazier, goldsmith and engraver of his time. This accounts for the cleverness with which he laid hold of the gentleman in black:

“St. Dunstan stood in his ivy’d tower,

Alembic, crucible, all were there;

When in came Nick to play him a trick,

In guise of a damsel, passing fair.

Every one knows

How the story goes:

He took up the tongs and caught hold of his nose.”[37]

§ 13. Ladies used seal-rings in the sixth century; but women of rank had no large seals till towards the beginning of the twelfth.[38]

§ 14. There is scarcely a hard substance of which rings have not been composed. All the metals have been brought into requisition. First, iron; then, as in Rome, it was mingled with gold.

Conquerors wore iron rings until Caius Marius changed the fashion. He had one when he triumphed over King Jugurtha.[39] And while stones have lent their aid as garniture for metal, these too have made the whole hoop.

We find rings of two stones; such were those which the Emperor Valerianus gave to Claudius.

Near to the Pyramids, cornelian rings have been discovered. Rings of glass and other vitreous material have been found. Emerald rings were discovered at Pompeii, also glass used instead of gems. Some made entirely of one stone, as of amber, have been obtained.[40]

With the Egyptians, bronze was seldom used in rings, though frequently in signets. They were mostly of gold and this metal seems to have been always preferred to silver.

Ivory and blue porcelain were the materials of which those worn by the lower classes were made.[41]

An ancient ring of jet has been dug up in England.

There were some rings of a single metal, and others of a mixture of two;[42] for the iron, bronze and silver were frequently gilt, or, at least, the gold part was fixed with the iron, as appears from Artemidorus.[43] The Romans were contented with iron rings a long time; and Pliny assures us that Marius first wore a gold one in his third consulate. Sometimes the ring was iron, and the seal gold; sometimes the stone was engraven, and sometimes plain; and the engraving, at times, was raised, and also sunk. (The last were called gemmæ ectypæ, the former gemmæ sculpturâ prominente.)

An incident, mentioned by Plutarch, shows how distinctive was a gold ring.[44] When Cinna and Caius Marius were slaughtering the citizens of Rome, the slaves of Cornutus hid their master in the house and took a dead body out of the street from among the slain and hanged it by the neck, then they put a gold ring upon the finger, and showed the corse in that condition to Marius’s executioners; after which they dressed it for the funeral, and buried it as their master’s body.

The rings of the classical ancients were rather incrusted than set in gold in our slight manner.[45]

The first mention of a Roman gold ring is in the year 432 U. C.; but they, at last, were indiscriminately worn by the Romans. Three bushels were gathered out of the spoils after Hannibal’s victory at Cannæ.[46]

“Lovely soft pearls, the fanciful images of sad tears,” have been used in rings from the time of the Latins. Cleopatra’s drinking off the residuum of a pearl, worth three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, aside from luxurious extravagance, seems to be somewhat nasty; but we are inclined to believe that this fond queen had faith in its supposed medicinal and talismanic properties:

“—— Now I feed myself

With most delicious passion.”

Pliny, the Roman naturalist, gravely tells us that the oyster which produces pearls, does so from feeding on heavenly dew. Drummond thus translates him:

“With open shells in seas, on heavenly dew,

A shining oyster lusciously doth feed;

And then the birth of that ethereal seed

Shows, when conceived, if skies look dark or blue.”[47]

Early English writers entertained the same notion; and Boethius, speaking of the pearl-mussel of the Scotch rivers, remarks, that “These mussels, early in the morning, when the sky is clear and temperate, open their mouths a little above the water and most greedily swallow the dew of heaven; and after the measure and quantity of the dew which they swallow, they conceive and breed the pearl. These mussels,” he continues, “are so exceedingly quick of touch and hearing, that, however faint the noise that may be made on the bank beside them, or however small the stone that may be thrown into the water, they sink at once to the bottom, knowing well in what estimation the fruit of their womb is to all people.” In the East, the belief is equally common that these precious gems are

“—— rain from the sky,

Which turns into pearls as it falls in the sea.”

The ancient idea that pearls are generated of the dews of heaven, is pretty conclusively met by Cardanus,[48] who says it is fabulous, seeing that the shell fishes, in which they are conceived, have their residence in the very bottom of the depth of the sea.

The charlatan Leoni de Spoleto prescribed the drink of dissolved pearls for Lorenzo the Magnificent, when he was attacked by fever aggravated by hereditary gout.[49]

There was supposed to be a gem called a carbuncle, which emitted, not reflected, but native light.[50] Our old literature abounds with allusions to this miraculous gem. Shakspeare has made use of it in Titus Andronicus, where Martius goes down into a pit, and, by it, discovers the body of Lord Bassianus; and calls up to Quintus thus:[51]

“Lord Bassianus lies embrewed here,

All on a heap, like to a slaughter’d lamb,

In this detested, dark, blood-drinking pit.

Quintus. If it be dark, how dost thou know ’tis he?

Martius. Upon his bloody finger he doth wear

A precious ring, that lightens all the hole,

Which, like a taper in some monument,

Doth shine upon the dead man’s earthy cheek,

And show the ragged entrails of this pit:

So pale did shine the moon on Pyramus,

When he by night lay bathed in maiden’s blood.”

Ludovicus Vartomannus, a Roman, reporteth that the king of Pege (or Pegu), a city in India, had a carbuncle (ruby) of so great a magnitude and splendor, that by the clear light of it he might, in a dark place, be seen, even as if the room or place had been illustrated by the sunbeams. St. or Bishop Epiphanius saith of this gem, that if it be worn, whatever garments it be covered withal, it cannot be hid.[52]

It was from a property of resembling a burning coal when held against the sun that this stone obtained the name carbunculus; which being afterwards misunderstood, there grew an opinion of its having the qualities of a burning coal and shining in the dark. And as no gem ever was or ever will be found endued with that quality, it was supposed that the true carbuncle of the ancients was lost; but it was long generally believed that there had been such a stone. The species of carbuncle of the ancients which possessed this quality in the greatest degree was the Garamantine or Carthaginian; and this is the true garnet of the moderns.[53]

Rings, with a death’s head upon them, were worn by improper characters in the time of Elizabeth of England. This kind of ring is referred to in Beaumont and Fletcher:

“—— I’ll keep it,

As they keep death’s head in rings:

To cry memento to me.”[54]

Although we meet with nothing to show the motive for wearing such rings by the characters referred to, we are inclined to fancy the desire was to carry the semblance of a widow and to let the ring have the character of a mourning token. Lord Onslow, who lived in the time of Elizabeth, bequeathed “a ring of gold with a death’s head” to friends.[55]

Sir Isaac Newton was possessed of a small magnet set in a ring, the weight of which was only three grains, but which supported, by its attractive power on iron, seven hundred grains. It has been observed that such instances are by no means common, although the smallest magnets appear to have the greatest proportionate power.[56]

Our own sailors, in the quiet weather of a voyage, will, with the aid of a marlinspike, make exceedingly neat rings out of Spanish silver or a copper coin.

Some of the Egyptian signets were of extraordinary size. Sir Gardiner Wilkinson mentions an ancient Egyptian one which contained about twenty pounds worth of gold. It consisted of a massive ring, half an inch in its largest diameter, bearing an oblong plinth, upon which the devices were engraved; on one face was the successor of Amunoph III., who lived B. C. 1400; on the other a lion, with the legend, “Lord of strength,” referring to the monarch; on the other side a scorpion, and on the remaining one a crocodile.

In the work of Count Caylus, there is a vignette of a ring of bronze, remarkable from its size and the subject upon it.[57] The collet or collar of the ring is an inch in height, and eleven lines in thickness. The figure upon it is an ox—or, as the author we have referred to calls it, a cow, recumbent and swaddled, or covered by draperies; and it wears a collar, to which hangs, according to this author, a bell. He considers that it was made when the Romans wore them of an excessive size, and while Gaul was under the dominion of the former. He does not give any guess at the intention or meaning of the subject. We believe it was, originally, Egyptian; and made in memory of the sacred Bull Apis, (found in tombs,) honored by the Egyptians as an image of the soul of Osiris and on the idea that his soul migrated from one Apis to another in succession. And as to what Caylus considers a bell, we are inclined to designate a bag. In Dr. Abbott’s collection of Egyptian Antiquities are not only mummies of these sacred bulls, but also the skulls of others, and over the head of one is suspended a large bag, found in the pits with the bulls, and supposed to be used to carry their food.

Addison, in observing upon the size of old Roman rings,[58] refers to Juvenal, as thus translated by Dryden:

“Charged with light summer rings, his fingers sweat,

Unable to support a gem of weight.”

And he goes on to say, that this “was not anciently so great an hyperbole as it is now, for I have seen old Roman rings so very thick-about and with such large stones in them, that it is no wonder a fop should reckon them a little cumbersome in the summer season of so hot a climate.”

As a proof of the size to which Roman rings sometimes reached, we here give an outline of one as it appears in Montfaucon.

This ring bears the portrait of Trajan’s good queen Plotina. The coiffure is remarkable and splendid, being composed of three rows of precious stones cut in facets.

According to Pliny, devices were not put upon the metal of rings until the reign of Claudius.

When a wealthy Egyptian had been embalmed and placed in a superb case or coffin, with a diadem on his head and bracelets upon his arms, rings of gold, ivory and engraved cornelian were placed upon his fingers.[59]