THE ROMANCE OF THE KOH-I-NUR.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1585, 15 April 1887, Page 3

THE ROMANCE OF THE KOH-I-NUR.

The Mogul dies in his Agra p-ison, y<*t ouo more victim of tho creeping malignity of the aurum Tholsanan, the possessor still of the great stone, knowa later as the lvon-i-nur, and his trevmres pa*s to Aurunjzeb, to rennin with :he Mogul Dvnas'.y until Nadir Shah, the son of the sheepskin clothier, swoops down on India in 1739. Then does the Persian adventurer send ratnv, both good and brave to swell the company below, who crowd with their pale eyes round the latest to learn the news of the upper world. My great diamond ! cries the Shah Jehan, wringing his transparent hands: who has uow my great diamond. Thay hear the furious Persian is at blood-heat search after the great stone, reaching it only at last through woman's treachery. A long chill sigh floats from the crowd of listening spectres, blood-washed all, as the harem attendant whispers Nadir the jewel is in Mohammed's turban, hidden away; and another, louder and more long, as at the great Delhi ceremony, to reinstate Mohammed on the throne of his Tartar ancestors. 1 Let us," cries Nadir, M in your country's fashion, exchange our turbans in final token of

amity." Mohammed Shah gives n° sign of chagrin or surprise. The exchange is made ; he takes the Persian's sheepskin headdress, and Nadir, withdrawing to his tent, trembling, unfolds the turban, and Koh-i-nur! he yells, at the sight of the long-lost stone —Kohi nur, mountain of light! A sad company then in the lower world; and sadder still now, maimed and tortured, most with a shadow of black hands over their sockets. So much does the aurum Tholsanum for them; afflict them as with a leprosy, contract their muscles, lop off their linbs, rob them of sight, even scald their wretched bare skulls with boiling oil poured into a diadem of paste, and ail this to be seen in the limpid depths of the diamond ! A lovely stone, perchance like the one lately shown, " which attracted attention by revealiug under the microscope a prospect of poiu f ed mountain-crests, lit up by a vivid sunlight in all colours of the rainbow." Rainbow, emblem of hops! What hope for any ot that Dantesque company, holding up their lopped limbs, as the poor conscripts found the mighty Emperor, with his arms folded, and the flames of hell licking and leaping round him? What hope for them, or for the rebel Sadek Khan, bricked up alife long since in a dungeon for retaining the Great Shall tablecut stone engraved with the nnme of three Persian rulers? bricked up alive, because his blood had been sworn by his enemy never to be shed. Hope has long flown from them all ; and hoptl.'ss they wander, uhilnutcs, among the echoing Avernian shades.

Asleep and naked as an Indian Iny, An honest factor stole a irera awiv; He p'edged it to the ki ight, the knight had wit, So kept the di'mond and the roguo wasbit f There you the whole diamond history in diamond edition and diamond type. Ths Indian steals ir, cuts a hole in his leg, and hides the gem in the wound and the bandage; the merchant of the native quarter steals it, while the original thief is asleep in the mimosa shade, throws him into the Tigris when he wakes and would set off for the cadi j the knight, governor of Fort what-you-will, steals it, or as good, for he uses all his power to force the merchant to take the lowest number of pagodas, and hurries him of out of the town when his cries grow loud ; then they poison him on board ship, on bre way home to buy an estate in Hampshire, and bang him in effiizy on shore, and his faithful body servant robs the dead and breaks up the stone to prevent identification, and the fragments fly here and there, and all begin again da capo. —Cornhill Magazine.