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.