Sweet names given to Pearls; Barry Cornwall Proctor's lines; Component parts of Pearls; Mother-of-pearl; How Pearls are formed, Sorrows into Gems; Their nucleus; Sir Everard Home and Sir David Brewster; Curious shapes and fancy Jewellery; Pearl Fisheries: Bahrein Island and Bay of Candalchy; Miseries of the Divers; Pearls as Physic; Immense value of recorded Pearls.
Of all beautiful things in the world the pearl is the rarest and most beautiful. Nothing can exceed it, nothing can equal it, although they try very hard in "French" and "Roman" ways, in glassy globules which continually crack, or in round spots of wax, which, instead of adorning, adhere to the neck of beauty, and when old age comes upon it, turn yellow and wrinkled like the skin of a dowager. Nay, nothing can well imitate it, although art has gone somewhat near it. But to a knowing eye one might as well seek to imitate truth, or palm away upon the unwary a copy of true virgin innocence as to imitate a pearl. We know all the answers that the dowagers can make; we know that the imitations are "so cheap," so pretty; we know that certain dowagers—witness Margaret, Duchess Dowager of Lancaster—sell their real pearls and wear cunning imitations; we know that they in vain try to persuade themselves that the false are as good as the true ones; but only look hard at the ornaments, and the duchess is abashed. To test false pearls, one has only to put a true one by them, and the "difference," as advertisers say, "will be at once perceived."
Let us devote this last portion of our book to the history of the pearl. Its very names are pretty. Looloo, Mootoo, Mootie, Margaritæ, Perles, Perlii, Perlas, Pearls, all sweet, pretty, mouth-rounding names, but worthy to be applied to the lustrous and beautiful spheres which we call pearls. Principium culmenque omnium, rerum pretii tenent: "Of all things, pearls," said Pliny, two thousand years ago, "kept the very top, highest, best, and first price." What was true then is true now. There are few things so immortal as good taste. Let us pay something "on account" of our debt to the oyster. Having regarded that placid creditor as an article of food, I now propose to treat him as an assistant to the toilet. And, looking at him in that point of view, here is not a bad instalment of the aforesaid debt, contributed by Barry Cornwall.
"Within the midnight of her hair,
Half-hidden in its deepest deeps,
A single peerless, priceless pearl
(All filmy-eyed) for ever sleeps.
Without the diamond's sparkling eyes,
The ruby's blushes—there it lies,
Modest as the tender dawn,