Diamante

“ Even if you cannot do anything with the diagram, you will le entitled to charge a fee for your trouble. In the old Portuguese writing occur the words, 'Casa dos diamantes,' which literally means 'The house of diamonds.' Da Costa has told me, however, that the expression has nothing to do with diamonds, for the stonemasons in Portugal call a stone cut into a four-sided pyramid 'diamante.' I find on inquiry that this is the case. If you can do anything to help Da Costa, you will oblige me. Trusting you are well, my dear Phenays,
"Believe me, yours sincerely,
"Jose da Fondeca Pinheiro." ”

“ From the outer courts of heaven, thronged with multitudes of celestial beings, angels are crowding in, breaking the lines of the prismatic aureole, as though the ardour of their joy could scarcely be repressed; while the everlasting light of God sheds radiance from above, and far below, lies earth with diminished sun and moon. The boldness of conception in this singular fresco reveals a genius capable of grappling with such problems as Tintoretto solved. Fra Filippo died at Spoleto, and left his work unfinished, to the care of his assistant, the Fra Diamante. ”

“ At this critical moment Duchess Leonora once more showed her courage and presence of mind. Seeing the greatness of the danger, she sent her children with a safe escort to Modena, and calling the magistrates together, she harangued them from the garden loggia, and bade them be true to their old lords of the house of Este. The citizens, moved to tears at the sight of Leonora's majesty and courage, shouted with one voice, "Diamante!"—the watchword of the house of Este, and vowed to die for their duke. ”

“ Lady Turnour, however, who regretted having missed the smart ball for the great world, given a few nights before, determined that people should be forced to appreciate her wealth and position; and the wardrobe of Solomon in all his glory could hardly have produced anything to exceed her gold tissue, diamanté.
When I had squeezed, and poked, and pushed her into it, and was bejewelling her, Sir Samuel came, as usual, to have his white cravat tied by me. Bertie, too, appeared, dressed for dinner, and watched me with silent amusement as I performed my evening duty for his stepfather. ”

“ The wind is fair and you are for Calabria with twenty tons of macaroni from Amalfi. There is no time to be lost, either, for you will probably come home in ballast. Past Scalea, then, where tradition says that Judas Iscariot was born and bred and did his first murder. Right ahead is the sharp point of the Diamante, beyond that low shore where the cane brake grows to within fifty yards of the sea. Now you have run past the little cape, and are abreast of the beach. Down mainsail—down jib—down foresail. ”

“ In the Baptism are seen beauty and goodness; and, in the Feast of Herod, the majesty of the banquet, the dexterity of Herodias, the astonishment of the company, and their immeasurable grief when the severed head is presented in the charger. Round the banqueting-table are seen innumerable figures with very beautiful attitudes, and with good execution both in the draperies and in the expressions of the faces. Among these, with a mirror, he portrayed himself dressed in the black habit of a prelate; and he made a portrait of his disciple Fra Diamante among those who are bewailing S. Stephen. ”

“ In Prato, near Florence, where Fra Filippo had some relations, he took up his abode for some months, and there executed various works for the whole surrounding district, in company with the Carmelite, Fra Diamante, who had been his companion in noviciate. Having then received a commission from the nuns of Santa Margherita, to paint a picture for the high altar of their church, he one day chanced to see the daughter of Francesco Buti, a citizen of Florence, who had been sent to the Convent, either as a novice or boarder. ”

“ DIAMANTE, FRA, Italian fresco painter, was born at Prato about 1400. He was a Carmelite friar, a member of the Florentine community of that order, and was the friend and assistant of Filippo Lippi. The Carmelite convent of Prato which he adorned with many works in fresco has been suppressed, and the buildings have been altered to a degree involving the destruction of the paintings. He was the principal assistant of Fra Filippo in the grand frescoes which may still be seen at the east end of the cathedral of Prato. ”

“ Sutton and Burleigh (1939a:36) recorded P. m. iulus only at Diamante Pass where they took two specimens.
*Sitta carolinensis nelsoni Mearns.—Miller (1955a:169) reported that this subspecies of the White-breasted Nuthatch breeds and was common in the oaks and open conifers from 6500 to 8000 feet in the Sierra del Carmen and stated also that the populations of the White-breasted Nuthatch in "the Chisos Mountains [of Texas] and the Sierra del Carmen seem best regarded as a stage in the cline of which nelsoni and mexicana are end points, although falling closer to nelsoni." ”

“ It is an extraordinary thing that the diamond, which is the most limpid and brilliant of all earthly stones, gains a thousand-fold in beauty when you, as it were, soil it with a black tint, while all other light stones, as soon as you touch them with a tint, lose their splendour, and turn black ”

“ The places where Diamonds have been found in modern times are—the central and southern parts of India, the peninsula of Malacca, the Island of Borneo,and some mountainous districts in the kingdom of Brazil, more particularly Serro do Frio. In the latter place, which is peculiarly celebrated, they are found in rivers or rivulets, in the banks adjoining water courses, and in ravines. The Diamond is invariably found mixed with the alluvial soil. This soil constitutes a thin stratum of gravel, resting upon Granite. ”

“ The peculiar virtue of the diamond, however, admits of the trying of a simple experiment, by which you can at once distinguish one stone from another, and it is this. You take your tint & rub both stones with it; your true diamond grows in brilliance & beauty, the other becomes deadened and splendourless. And this test suffices without trying the test of hardness too, but if you rubbed the two stones together you would soon find out the diamond. Though the sapphire is so much harder than the ruby & the emerald, it is a thousand times less so than the diamond. ”

“ Very rarely a simple sifting with the fingers suffices to extract the jewel. In 1824 a region was discovered in the lower part of the table-land of Diamantina where the diamonds were scattered through the soil, accompanied only by a few bits of quartz. According to the popular expression, the crystals of the precious stone could be picked out of the roots of the grass when it was pulled up. A diamond of twenty-eight carats was found on the surface of the ground. ”

“ Its color is that of ice, and as the dewdrop or the drop of water from a mountain stream sparkles in the light of the sun, as the icicle sparkles in winter, and the stars on a cold winter night, so the diamond sparkles, and it combines and contrasts with all known gems. Like light, it illumines them just as the sun does the plants of the earth. The diamond, the gem of light, like light itself when broken into a spectrum, gives us all known colors, and by combining all these colors it gives us white. ”

“ One day we handled some packages of spotless gems that the broker had been months collecting; they were beautiful indeed. One package, worth many thousands of dollars, contained yellow diamonds, selected stones in size, colour, and purity. Those of yellow tinge are bought and worn by the East Indians.
The pure white stone is of more value than the yellow because not so plentiful. It is a strange fact that these diamond merchants seldom wear diamond jewellery; they prefer rubies or corals to the too common gem, the diamond. ”

“ Yellow diamonds are not necessarily devoid of brilliancy, as we can bear witness from personal knowledge. There was recently offered for sale at a public auction in London a very large specimen known as the Orange Diamond, of one hundred and ten carats weight, which we [Pg 219] carefully examined. The circumstances were decidedly adverse to the beauty of a diamond, for it was in the half-light of a London fog that we saw it, yet the stone seemed literally to shoot tongues of yellow fire from its facets. ”

“ At last, from out of its silver paper and casing, the jewel lay revealed, and she stood, gazing a little awestruck at its flashing beauty.
It was a diamond star, to be worn as a brooch, and, every spike radiating from the centre diamond of great size and brilliancy, was composed of selected stones. Worked in across the star, in sapphires, were the words "Regina Imperatrix," and [Pg 125] the blue and white lights from sapphire and diamond shone dazzlingly from their satin bed. ”

“ A diamond, carefully cut and perfectly polished, glitters and shines in the sun with exceeding brilliancy. It not only reflects the light, but also absorbs it into itself, so as to shine even in the dark with the light it has absorbed. It actually becomes, as it were, a little sun, shining with its own light. It is thus become a partaker of the sun's nature, while it retains its own peculiar diamond nature and individuality. ”

“ A well-cut brilliant should appear opaque by transmitted light except at a small spot in the middle where the table and culet are opposite. All the light falling on the front of the stone is reflected from the facets, and the light passing into the diamond is reflected [103] from the interior surfaces and refracted into colours when it passes out into the air, giving rise to the lightnings, the effulgence, and coruscations for which the diamond is supreme above all other gems. ”

“ No substance in the Mineral Kingdom displays in miniature such beautiful variety of regular solids as the Diamond, which are as captivating to the connoisseur, as the finest brilliant can be to the wearer. ”

“ All authorities state that the diamond is intimately connected with gold and platinum, but I cannot find any record which convinces me of the diamond having been found in the matrix—that is to say, in the rock in which it was originally formed—as all the formation in which the diamond has been found appear to have been the detritus of older rocks, in which it by some means or other had become imbedded during the formation of the newer one. ”

“ The word Diamond is a corruption of, and synonymous with, Adamant, derived from the Greek adamas, untamable, infrangible, not to be subdued, in accordance with the prefix a, without, and damas, to tame, to subdue. As every one must be aware, the diamond is capable of resisting fire. ”

“ Diamonds are not only found in the bottom of rivers when dry, but at the foot of craggy hills and mountains. The párits, or mines, are dug to the depth of from one to five fathoms only; but experience has invariably proved, that the deeper they are dug, not only are the diamonds more abundant, but superior in size, shape, and water. ”

“ The true diamond, however, no matter what may be its hue, has an iridescent brightness which no other gem can counterfeit. This iridescence, coupled with its hardness, forms the test of the diamond; and its absence never fails to reveal the nature of an impostor. If anything can scratch a stone, that stone is not a diamond. The writer, in common with all her schoolmates, once bestowed a great deal of admiration and no small portion of envy upon a young companion on the strength of that young companion's diamond, a lustrous gem of most remarkable size. ”

“ There is no doubt that the five gems—diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire, and pearl—have grown more fully than all others into our ways of living. They have become, as I shall indicate in this chapter, adornments not only of our persons but of our speech and writing. They are used not only in figures of jewelry but in figures of speech, to express human beauty, or eminence, or virtue. The poet and the orator, as well as the monarch and the lover, have utilized the glamour of the gem.
Diamond
Supreme in human imagination is the diamond, the hardest of all stones. ”

“ The precision and speed of his improvisation revealed him. He had twenty other diamonds like this one. He kept them for those Sundays when the sun comes up in the west. Of course—often! Some day he was going to melt a diamond and eat it. Then you sparkled all over in the dark, ever after. ”

“ Divers sorts of diamonds require some a darker, some a lighter tint; some again need a softer, some a harder tint, and so it is necessary, whenever you are setting a diamond of great importance, to try it with the hard and the soft, or with the dark and the light in accordance with the quality of the stone and the judgment of the good jeweller. Some have put as little lampblack as possible when tinting a diamond that seemed too yellow, and have instead mixed with their tint indigo, a blue colour known to every painter. ”

“ So, though in the clear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the pure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning jeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he lays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun, but by some unnatural gases. ”

“ When perfectly pure a diamond is as transparent as a drop of the purest water, in which state it is known to you who live overhead as a diamond of the first water; and in proportion as it falls short of this perfection it is said to be of the second, third, or fourth water, till it becomes a coloured one. Coloured diamonds are brown, yellow, green, blue, or red, the deeper the colour the more valuable they are, though still inferior to those absolutely colourless. Many of my largest diamonds have fallen into the hands of man. ”