Behind gray hairs and furrowed brow
And withered look that life puts on,
Each, as he wears it, comes to know
How the child hides, and is not gone.
For, while the inexorable years
To saddened features fit their mould,
Beneath the work of time and tears
Waits something that will not grow old!
And pain and petulance and care
And wasted hope and sinful stain
Shape the strange guise the soul doth wear,
Till her young life look forth again.
The beauty of his boyhood's smile,—
What human faith could find it now
In yonder man of grief and guile,—
A very Cain, with branded brow?
Yet, overlaid and hidden, still
It lingers,—of his life a part;
As the scathed pine upon the hill
Holds the young fibres at its heart.
And, haply, round the Eternal Throne,
Heaven's pitying angels shall not ask
For that last look the world hath known,
But for the face behind the mask!
DIAMONDS AND PEARLS.
We were lately lounging away a Roman morning among the gems in Castellani's sparkling rooms in the Via Poli. One of the treasures handed out for rapturous examination was a diamond necklace, just finished for a Russian princess, at the cost of sixty thousand dollars, and a set of pearls for an English lady, who must pay, before she bears her prize homeward, the sum of ten thousand dollars. Castellani junior, a fine, patriotic young fellow, who has since been banished for his liberal ideas of government, smiled as he read astonishment in our eyes, and proceeded forthwith to dazzle us still further with more gems of rarest beauty, till then hidden away in his strong iron boxes.
Castellani, father and son, are princes among jewellers, and deserve to be ranked as artists of a superior order. Do not fail to visit their charming apartments, as among the most attractive lesser glories, when you go to Rome. They have a grand way of doing things, right good to look upon; and we once saw a countrywoman of ours, who has written immortal words in the cause of freedom, made the recipient of a gem at their hands, which she cannot but prize as among the chief tributes so numerously bestowed in all parts of the Christian world where her feet have wandered.
Castellani's jeweller's shop has existed in Rome since the year 1814. At that time all the efforts of this artist (Castellani the elder) were directed to the imitation of the newest English and French fashions, and particularly to the setting of diamonds. This he continued till 1823. From 1823 to 1827 he sought aid for his art in the study of Technology. And not in vain; for in 1826 he read before the Accademia dei Lincei of Rome, (founded by Federico Cesi,) a paper on the chemical process of coloring a giallone (yellow) in the manufacture of gold, in which he announced some facts in the action of electricity, long before Delarive and other chemists, as noticed in the "Quarterly Journal of Science," Dec., 1828, No. 6, and the "Bibliothèque Universelle de Genève," 1829, Tom. xi. p. 84.