Pearls in the mart like oyster-shells were spurned!
AMOUNT OF GOLD IN THE WORLD.
Estimate the yard of gold at £2,000,000, (which it is in round numbers,) and all the gold in the world might, if melted into ingots, be contained in a cellar twenty-four feet square and sixteen feet high. All the boasted wealth already obtained from California and Australia would go into a safe nine feet square and nine feet high; so small is the cube of yellow metal that has set populations on the march and occasioned such wondrous revolutions in the affairs of the world.
The contributions of the people, in the time of David, for the sanctuary, exceeded £6,800,000. The immense treasure David is said to have collected for the sanctuary amounted to £889,000,000 sterling, (Crito says £798,000,000,)—a sum greater than the British national debt. The gold with which Solomon overlaid the “most holy place,” a room only thirteen feet square, amounted to more than thirty-eight millions sterling.
The products of the California mines from 1853 to 1858 are put down at $443,091,000; those of Australia, since their discovery, at $296,813,000; or $739,904,000 in all,—an increase of about one-third, according to the best statistical writers, on the value of this precious metal known in 1850. The total value of gold in the world at the present time, then, is but little more than $3,000,000,000.
IMMENSE WEALTH OF THE ROMANS.
| Crassus’ landed estate was valued at | $8,333,330 |
| His house was valued at | 400,000 |
| Cæcilius Isidorus, after having lost much, left | 5,235,800 |
| Demetrius, a freedman of Pompey, was worth | 3,875,000 |
| Lentulus, the augur, no less than | 16,666,666 |
| Clodius, who was slain by Milo, paid for his house | 616,666 |
| He once swallowed a pearl worth | 40,000 |
| Apicius was worth more than | 4,583,350 |
| And after he had spent in his kitchen, and otherwise squandered, immense sums, to the amount of | 4,166,666 |
| He poisoned himself, leaving | 416,666 |
| The establishment belonging to M. Scarus, and burned at Tusculum, was valued at | 4,150,000 |
| Gifts and bribes may be considered signs of great riches: Cæsar presented Servilia, the mother of Brutus, with a pearl worth | 200,000 |
| Paulus, the consul, was bribed by Cæsar with the sum of | 292,000 |
| Curio contracted debts to the amount of | 2,500,000 |
| Milo contracted a debt of | 2,915,666 |
| Antony owed at the Ides of March, which he paid before the Calends of April | 1,666,666 |
| He had squandered altogether | 735,000,000 |
| Seneca had a fortune of | 17,500,000 |
| Tiberius left at his death, and Caligula spent in less than twelve months, | 118,120,000 |
| Caligula spent for one supper | 150,000 |
| Heliogabalus in the same manner | 100,000 |
| The suppers of Lucullus at the Apollo cost | 8,330 |
| Horace says that Pegellus, a singer, could in five days spend | 40,000 |
| Herrius’ fish-ponds sold for | 166,000 |
| Calvinus Labinus purchased many learned slaves, none of them at a price less than | 4,165 |
| Stage-players sold much higher. |
WINE AT TWO MILLIONS A BOTTLE.
Wine at two millions of dollars a bottle is a drink that in expense would rival the luxurious taste of barbaric splendor, when priceless pearls were thrown into the wine-cup to give a rich flavor to its contents; yet that there is such a costly beverage, is a fixed fact. In the Rose apartment (so called from a bronze bas-relief) of the ancient cellar under the Hotel de Ville in the city of Bremen is the famous Rosenwein, deposited there nearly two centuries and a half ago. There were twelve large cases, each bearing the name of one of the apostles; and the wine of Judas, despite the reprobation attached to his name, is to this day more highly esteemed than the others. One case of the wine, containing five oxhoft of two hundred and four bottles, cost five hundred rix-dollars in 1624. Including the expenses of keeping up the cellar, and of the contributions, interests of the amounts, and interests upon interests, an oxhoft costs at the present time 555,657,640 rix-dollars, and consequently a bottle is worth 2,723,812 rix-dollars; a glass, or the eighth part of a bottle, is worth 340,476 rix-dollars, or $272,380; or at the rate of 540 rix-dollars, or $272, per drop. A burgomaster of Bremen is privileged to have one bottle whenever he entertains a distinguished guest who enjoys a German or European reputation. The fact illustrates the operation of interest, if it does not show the cost of luxury.