I think this chaste splendor will glow
in my memory for years to come. It is the effect of time, and cannot be
imitated by any known process of art. I have seen it in specimens of old
Roman glass, which has been famous here in England; but never in anything
is there the brilliancy of these Oriental fragments. How strange that
decay, in dark places, and underground, and where there are a billion
chances to one that nobody will ever see its handiwork, should produce
these beautiful effects! The glass seems to become perfectly brittle, so
that it would vanish, like a soap-bubble, if touched.
Ascending the stairs, I went through the halls of fossil remains,--which
I care little for, though one of them is a human skeleton in limestone,--
and through several rooms of mineralogical specimens, including all the
gems in the world, among which is seen, not the Koh-i-noor itself, but a
fac-simile of it in crystal. I think the aerolites are as interesting as
anything in this department, and one piece of pure iron, laid against the
wall of the room, weighs about fourteen hundred pounds. Whence could it
have come? If these aerolites are bits of other planets, how happen they
to be always iron? But I know no more of this than if I were a
philosopher.
Then I went through rooms of shells and fishes and reptiles and
tortoises, crocodiles and alligators and insects, including all manner of
butterflies, some of which had wings precisely like leaves, a little
withered and faded, even the skeleton and fibres of the leaves
represented; and immense hairy spiders, covering, with the whole
circumference of their legs, a space as big as a saucer; and centipedes
little less than a foot long; and winged insects that look like jointed
twigs of a tree.
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