“In one of her letters to Elizabeth, supplicating her to procure some amelioration of the rigorous confinement of her captive friends, Mary alludes to her stolen jewels:—­’I beg also,’ says she, ’that you will prohibit the sale of the rest of my jewels, which the rebels have ordered in their Parliament, for you have promised that nothing should be done in it to my prejudice.  I should be very glad, if they were in safer custody, for they are not meat proper for traitors.  Between you and me it would make little difference, and I should be rejoiced, if any of them happened to be to your taste, that you would accept them from me as offerings of my good-will.’

“From this frank offer it is apparent that Mary was not aware of the base part Elizabeth had acted, in purchasing her magnificent parure of pearls of Moray, for a third part of their value.”

One of the most famous pearls yet discovered (there may be shells down below that hide a finer specimen) is the beautiful Peregrina.  It was fished up by a little negro boy in 1560, who obtained his liberty by opening an oyster.  The modest bivalve was so small that the boy in disgust was about to pitch it back into the sea.  But he thought better of his rash determination, pulled the shells asunder, and, lo, the rarest of priceless pearls! [Moral. Don’t despise little oysters.] La Peregrina is shaped like a pear, and is of the size of a pigeon’s egg.  It was presented to Philip II. by the finder’s master, and is still in Spain.  No sum has ever determined its value.  The King’s jeweller named five hundred thousand dollars, but that paltry amount was scouted as ridiculously small.

There is a Rabbinical story which aptly shows the high estimate of pearls in early ages, only one object in Nature being held worthy to be placed above them:—­

“On approaching Egypt, Abraham locked Sarah in a chest, that none might behold her dangerous beauty.  But when he was come to the place of paying custom, the collectors said, ‘Pay us the custom’:  and he said, ’I will pay the custom.’  They said to him, ‘Thou carriest clothes’:  and he said, ‘I will pay for clothes.’  Then they said to him, ‘Thou carriest gold’:  and he answered them, ‘I will pay for my gold.’  On this they further said to him, ‘Surely thou bearest the finest silk’:  he replied, ’I will pay custom for the finest silk.’  Then said they, ’Surely it must be pearls that thou takest with thee’:  and he only answered, ’I will pay for pearls.’  Seeing that they could name nothing of value for which the patriarch was not willing to pay custom, they said, ’It cannot be but thou open the box, and let us see what is within.’  So they opened the box, and the whole land of Egypt was illumined by the lustre of Sarah’s beauty,—­far exceeding even that of pearls.”

Shakspeare, who loved all things beautiful, and embalmed them so that their lustre could lose nothing at his hands, was never tired of introducing the diamond and the pearl.  They were his favorite ornaments; and we intended to point out some of the splendid passages in which he has used them.  But we have room now for only one of those priceless sentences in which he has set the diamond and the pearl as they were never set before.  No kingly diadem can boast such jewels as glow along these lines from “Lear":—­