Stone (object)

“ In general outline the object, which is a rough-looking stone, is of an oval form, 2 feet 11 5⁄8 inches long, 1 foot 3 1⁄2 inches broad, and 1 foot 2 7⁄8 inches deep; and as regards most of its surface does not differ from an ordinary bowlder of Lower Carboniferous conglomerate, numbers of which lie scattered around the neighboring fields. ”

“ To those who may wish to occupy themselves with this problem these explorations have furnished, as we have just seen, a vast collection of objects made of stone, bone, horn, wood, bronze, iron, and gold.
Among the stone objects are—querns, hammer-stones, whetstones, so-called sling-stones, a few cup-marked stones (one surrounded by concentric circles) , spindle-whorls, flint flakes, and [Pg 450] scrapers, a polished celt, a perforated axe-hammer head, portions of two polished circular discs, and some oval implements with a wrought hollowed surface on each side. ”

“ Other stones, such as ‘fired’ zircon, white sapphire, white topaz, and rock-crystal, may dazzle with brilliancy of light reflected from the surface or emitted from the interior, but none of them, like diamond, glow with mysterious gleams. No hint of colour, save perhaps a trace of the blue of steel, can be tolerated in stones of this category; above all is a touch of the jaundice hue of yellow abhorred. It taxes all the skill of the lapidary to assure that the disposition of the facets be such as to reveal the full splendour of the stone. ”

“ As you have marked an elaborately-carved stone sink slowly from its ponderous 'drop' to its place in an edifice which is to stand for ages, did you never scan closely its grained streaks, its delicate chissellings, with the thought that when you were senseless clay, that very stone might arrest the eye of another, gazing upon it with sensations like your own? ”

“ A big stone attracts your notice, and, to your amazement, you find that it does not weigh so much as a piece of wood of the same size would weigh down here. A stone that you could hardly stir on the earth, you can carry about on the moon. ”

“ No recognized school of sculpture had animated this terrible object, yet centuries and even thousands of years seemed recorded in its dim and greenish surface of unplaceable stone. ”

“ A stone is merely a stone to most men. But within the interstices of the stone, and involving it like an atmosphere, are great and mighty influences, powers which are fearful in their grander operations, and wonderful in their gentler developments. The stone and the flower hold, locked up in their recesses, the three great known forces—light, heat, and electricity: and, in all probability, others of a more exalted nature still, to which these powers are but subordinate agents. ”

“ Then it is a stone put on the wall in its right place, and it is a good stone of the right quality. You have quarrelled with a neighbour, you have made it up, heartily and bear no more malice, that is a good stone;—forgiveness of injuries—a capital stone that won't let the water through. ”

“ There is not a single straight line to be met with from foundation to roof, all is bending or broken. The form of every stone stone in its walls is a study; for, owing to the infinite delicacy of structure in all minerals, a piece of stone 3 in. in diameter, irregularly fractured, and a little worn by the weather, has precisely the same character of outline which we should find and admire in a mountain of the same material 6,000 ft. ”

“ Even if you have never learnt much of what is called geology, by keeping your eyes open and your mind awake you may see a great deal in the stones which have perhaps seemed to you most uninteresting. A block of granite from one of the Dartmoor hills, and a piece of slate from a Welsh quarry—how different these two kinds of stone are! We see this at once; but they become much more interesting when we know that each has its own history. ”

“ Thou sawest until that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, which smote the image upon the feet that was part of iron and part of clay, and brake them to pieces, then was the iron, the clay, the silver, the brass and the gold all broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floor, and the wind carried them away, and there was no place found for them, but the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. ”

“ The stone is faced with a precision that no skill can excel, its right angles turned with an accuracy that the most careful geometer could not surpass. I do not believe there exists a better piece of stone-cutting, the material considered, on this or the other continent. ”

“ To understand why certain forms are given to a cut stone, it is essential for us to ascertain what becomes of the light which falls upon the surface of the stone; further, we shall find that the action of a stone upon light is of very great help in distinguishing the different species of gem-stones. ”

“ Because it is susceptible of elevation and depth, of contours and reliefs, through the variety of its planes and surfaces, stone seems to them a more suitable medium for creating a background for Man than are plants, which they reduce to their normal place of decoration and ornament. ”

“ Now, when we begin to examine a piece of one of these granites, we see at once that it is not an homogeneous stone—such, for instance, as is a bit of flint but that it is built up of various dissimilar-looking materials ”

“ Lines which are lovely in the pearly film of the Nautilus shell, are lost in the grey roughness of stone; and those which are sublime in the blue of far away hills, are weak in the substance of incumbent marble. ”

“ On the other hand, set a stone to rolling that is unpolished and rough from the mountain side, and it will do great execution in its course, and leave a visible path behind it, and become smoother as it rolls. ”

“ We read in these masses of broken stone, that centuries on centuries have passed since they began to form, for every particle contained in them, when loosened by frost, heat or cold, fell from dizzy heights piece by piece. ”

“ From the bottommost stone to the highest there is never a break in the perfect line; and the plain massive base of enormous quarried stones, some of which, they say, measure ten feet by three, passes into the light octagonal spire, covered with its curious coat of mail or fishes’ scales, by imperceptible and inevitable gradations. It is a triumph of sheer beauty of proportion unaided by the art of ornament. ”

“ A good stone is porous, yet brittle, of a pale yellowish drab, and sometimes of a gray neutral tint. The stones are formed into slabs from one and a-half to three inches in thickness. To prepare them for use, two stones are placed face to face with some fine sifted sand between them, and then are rubbed together with a circular motion, to produce the requisite granulation, which is made finer or coarser to suit the purpose of the artist. ”

“ Another thing very remarkable is, that each stone had a hole in it which appeared to have been made for the better raising them to a height by a kind of forceps of iron, and bringing them so much the easier to their several beds and courses. ”

“ Stone seems, by the cunning labor of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb. ”

“ Wonderful masses of stone are reared with a grand and impressive simplicity, and retain their interest even when stripped by time, change, and decay of all their once florid and gorgeous ornamentation. ”

“ If a stone be found on which is graven or figured an armed man or the draped figure of a virgin, bound with laurel and having a laurel branch in her hand, this stone is sacred and frees the wearer from all changes and haps of fortune.
When thou findest a stone on which is graven the figure of a man holding a scythe in his hand, a stone like this imparts strength and power to the wearer. Every day adds to his strength, courage and boldness. ”

“ And yet we do not assume that the whole interior of this globe of ours is composed of stones or iron (although Franciscus Maurolycus, that learned man, deems the whole of the earth's interior to consist of solid stone) . For not every loadstone that we have is a stone, it being sometimes like a clod, or like clay and iron either firmly compacted together out of various materials, or of a softer composition, or by heat reduced to the metallick state ”

“ The stone which is hurled is indeed in one respect a stone of tremendous weight, the style of the article being ponderous to a degree that borders on pomposity. But, unfortunately, if there is a hole in the armor of the giant, the stone has certainly failed to hit it ”

“ This stone was to be hewed and squared, to be fitted and adjusted, by simple, but appropriate implements, until it became a perfect ashlar, or well-finished stone, ready to take its destined place in the building.
Here, then, again, in these materials do we find other elementary symbols. The rough and unpolished stone is a symbol of man's natural state--ignorant, uncultivated, and, as the Roman historian expresses it, "grovelling to the earth, like the beasts of the field, and obedient to every sordid appetite;" ”

“ A close-grained stone called lithographic stone (a kind of magnesian limestone) is ground perfectly even on the surface, and (if for being written upon) polished with pumice-stone, or (if for being drawn upon with chalk) grained with fine sand; the design is drawn with chalk or ink, each of which is made up of greasy materials—wax, soap, and asphaltum, colored with lamp-black. When the design is made, the stone is etched—washed over with a weak mixture of nitric acid and water—which answers three purposes ”

“ If one will reflect on the beginnings of human culture, it may seem to one that the earliest man picked up a flat bit of bright stone without irregular edges—perhaps it was oval—and drilled a little hole in the top, and wore it about his neck as an ornament. ”

“ The stone I have since seen; it is bigger at one end then the other; of no plain Superficies, but full of little cavities. The stone, when broken, is full of small peble stones of an Ovall figure: its colour is gray like free-stone, but intermixt with veins of yellow and black. ”

“ Broken masses of stone are heaped in the wildest confusion on every side, and all up the craggy slopes, a wilderness of grey stone, of which the aspect is painfully desolate, and, so to speak, ruined. ”

“ A brown stone, in no respect presenting anything by which it shall be distinguished from other rude stones around it, is found, upon close examination, to possess the power of drawing light particles of iron towards it. If this stone is placed upon a table, and iron filings are thrown lightly around it, we discover that these filings arrange themselves in symmetric curves, proceeding from some one point of the mass to some other ”

“ Each stone is shaped and fashioned to the size that may be wanted, before it is removed from the parent rock, by which much difficulty is avoided and less power required in conveying it to its destination. ”

“ The stones, which on the inside are smooth and well-fitted, are on the outside very irregular, and, contrary to the general belief, they are not immediately covered with earth, but with enormous masses of stone, which, by their ponderous weight, keep all the stones of the circular layers of masonry in their position. ”

“ Heavy stones.
The largest stones cannot usefully have any case; as a case which would not be cracked up by the weight in moving, would be so thick and heavy that it would make the stone far less moveable. ”

“ Lifting toward the sky are vast buildings of stone, not the same kind of stone from which my forefathers fashioned their carven pipes and corn-pounders, but a grayer, grimier rock that would not take the polish we give by fingers dipped in sturgeon oil, and long days of friction with fine sand and deer-hide. ”

“ A stone which the current has washed down, meeting with obstacles, revolves as on a pivot where it lies, gradually sinking in the course of centuries deeper and deeper into the rock, and in new freshets receiving the aid of fresh stones, which are drawn into this trap and doomed to revolve there for an indefinite period, doing Sisyphus-like penance for stony sins, until they either wear out, or wear through the bottom of their prison, or else are released by some revolution of nature. ”

“ The specific gravity of a stone is a character which is within narrow limits constant for each64 species, and is therefore very useful for discriminative purposes. It can be determined whatever be the shape of the stone, and it is immaterial whether it be transparent or not ”

“ You have been fortunate enough to secure an exceptionally magnificent stone, without doubt. It is, of course, somewhat difficult to judge of the precise value of a gem in its rough, uncut state, but I should say that you have there a stone that will prove almost unique, not only as to size, but also for its perfect colour. ”

“ But it is always to be noted that, though there are various kinds of unlikeness in the stones, and one loadstone may far surpass another in virtue and efficiency; yet all hold to the same limits, and are borne toward the same points. Further it is to be remembered that all who before our time wrote of the poles of the stone, and all the craftsmen and navigators, have been very greatly in error in considering the part of the stone which tended to the north as the north pole of the stone, and that which verged toward the south, the south pole, which we shall hereafter prove to be false. ”

“ Flakes and splinters of silicious stone, whether flint, jasper, chert, iron-stone, quartzite, or obsidian, are to be found in almost all known countries, and belong to all ages. They are in fact the most catholic of all stone implements, and have been in use "semper, ubique, et ab omnibus." Whether we look in our old
Fig. ”