Ruskin was not a "scientific" mineralogist, though he was an F.G.S. from an early age, and used the word "science" pretty freely in his writings. He really knew a great deal about minerals, too; but his knowledge was that of the artist and collector, taking little notice of the mathematics and chemistry which you read about, yet finding deep and keen interest in the forms and colours, the development, the "Life of Stones," "Ethics of the Dust," as he put it, about which science, up to his time, had nothing to say. And yet, as he showed his collection, you could not but feel that this was a kind of Nature-study not only fascinating, but of real importance.
A standard work, under the heading, "Native Gold," tells us: "The octahedron and dodecahedron are the most common forms. Crystals sometimes acicular ... also passing into filiform, reticulated, and arborescent shapes; and occasionally spongiform," &c. But it does not show you, as Ruskin could—pulling out drawer after drawer of his plush-lined cabinets, and letting you handle and peer into the dainty things with a lens—what gold, as Nature makes it, actually is. The scientific book never asks why some gold is born in the shape of tiny, solid, squarish crystals, as truly crystals as the uncut diamonds lying beside them, or the quartz in which they nestle; or why other samples are spun into hair, or woven into wisps, or ravelled into knots of natural gold lace; or again, why these have grown into the shape of exquisitely finished moss, and those into seaweed leaves, flat and curly, and powdered with dust of gold crystals, springing from the rough brown stone, or semi-transparent spar, inside of which you can see them like flower-stalks in water. Here is quite a new world of wonder and mystery, and that is the kind of "science" he puzzled over. Some more solid masses, not water-worn nuggets, are like a tiny netsuke; he had a miniature cobra, chased with its scales—all by the art of Nature; and others so like early Greek coins that one might fancy they had given suggestions to primitive mint-masters, who like all good artists modelled their work on Nature. What a happy world, he used to say, if all the gold were in its native fronds; and even for jewellery how much prettier these leaves of gold as it grew, than anything the manufacturing goldsmith sells you. I have drawn a group of eight such fronds, arranged as a cross, the centre piece with two tiny crystals of quartz naturally set into it, a gift from his collection to a friend, as an instance of what Ruskin called a jewel: and from his own rapid sketch in colour (over leaf) is a knot of natural silver wire, for silver, too, has its "arborescent filiform" shapes.
GOLD AS IT GROWS
(Actual Size)
After gold and silver and diamonds you might think the interest of the mineral-drawers would begin to wane. But no! we come to richer colours and still more striking forms. This big pebble, rosy pink, with hazy streaks inside which catch the light as you turn it about, and reveal mysterious inner architecture—that is a ruby; and this also, a bit of frozen raspberry jam engraved with mystic triangles, one inside another like a dwarf-wrought seal of a fairy king. Then hold up this slab of talc to the light; the dark patch in it glows like a red lamp with the intense colour of the garnet. Lower down the cabinet there are bunches of beryls, angelica stalks Queen Thyri would not have scorned; or trimmed by Nature into quaint likeness to those six-sided Austrian pencils, point and all: emeralds in short and snapped-off sticks of mossy green; pale pink rods of tourmaline; clippings of a baby's hair, but crimson, and so fragile you must not breathe on them—that is ruby copper, chalcotrichite; black needles of rutile piercing through and through the solid, glassy quartz-crystals; amianthus, plush on a stone, tow on a distaff, waving seaweed in a motionless aquarium of hard spar. Why were these dainty things created, or how did they grow, hidden away from all possible light for their colours to develop or sight of man to enjoy them, until mining folk dug them up from their lurking-places? And then there are those which even when found show little of their beauty until they are polished; agates, and Labrador spar, and malachites, and fire opals; what theory of Nature accounts for this latent loveliness? he would say; how little this kind of beauty is known and enjoyed by people who are satisfied with jewellery from the price-list! One of his plans was to form a jewel-museum in which the curator should exhibit, with lens and leisurely explanations, such treasures to admiring groups of visitors. The place, indeed, was fixed, at Keswick; the curator named. But the curator designate shirked the too responsible honour.
NATIVE SILVER