OCR Text |
Show THE RING. From a mere bauble, an insignia of wealth and aristocracy, the Greeks elevated the ring to a sentimental distinction, and since that date it has assumed a significance accorded to no other article of personal adornment, as a token of affection between the living, of eternal remembrance of dead or distant friends. Gold-workers and lapidaries have exercised their ingenuity in order to invent new and fantastic designs, to invest it with beauty or singularity; epigrammatists have exhausted their wit upon fitting mottoes to be inscribed within its enchanted circle; but it was reserved for the French jewelers of modern times to ensnare the fancy by so adroitly arranging the gems in their setting as to spell out, with their initial letters some graceful sentiment or pet name. In earlier days medicinal qualities were supposed to reside in the wedding ring, capable of removing imperfections of the skin, though in later ages it would seem to be more effectual in developing imperfections of the temper; in those ages of easy faith a ring which had touched the skulls of the Magi, reposing in solemn splendor in the Cathedral of Cologne, would secure the owner against the evil-eye, sudden death, or accident, while that which bore the name of one of thos Kings of the East, or had been blessed by the sovereign on Good-Friday, was a talisman, to which the most fastidious could not object, against cramps. Legend and history meet about this little hoop of cold, and enrich it with a spell or story, as the ancient jewels beautified it with elaborate chasing and precious stone, with skillful labor lavished upon cameo and intaglio. Nowadays it has become a somewhat matter-of-fact ornament; rustic loves no long break it in halves as an assurance of constancy, balladmakers no longer hand their rhymes upon it; all the cunning of our improved civilization can not fashion us a ring like Solomon's which can seal the evil genius of the times in a jar, and what goldsmith of to-day can warrant his rings to render the purchaser invisible, or the appease the injured gods if thrown into the sea? To brief, the ring has augured not only in domestic concerns, in affairs of love and witchcraft, but in church and state; and though the feminine mind is supposed to be peculiarly susceptible to a regard for the gewgaws and finery, yet the ring had long lost its novelty before its use was extended to women.-Harper's Bazaar. |