THE CRYSTAL ORDERS.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Ruskin, John
Kathleen. I've lost some; here are the rest in my pocket, if I can only get them out.
L. You mean to get them out some day, I suppose; so try now. I want them.
(Kathleen empties her pocket on the floor. The beads disperse. The School disperses also. Second Interlude—hunting piece.)
L. (after waiting patiently for a quarter of an hour, to Isabel, who comes up from under the table with her hair all about her ears, and the last findable beads in her hand). Mice are useful little things sometimes. Now, mousie, I want all those beads crystallised. How many ways are there of putting them in order?
Isabel. Well, first one would string them, I suppose?
L. Yes, that's the first way. You cannot string ultimate atoms; but you can put them in a row, and then they fasten themselves together, somehow, into a long rod or needle. We will call these 'Needle-crystals.' What would be the next way?
Isabel. I suppose, as we are to get together in the playground, when it stops raining, in different shapes?
L. Yes; put the beads together, then, in the simplest form you can, to begin with. Put them into a square, and pack them close.
Isabel (after careful endeavour). I can't get them closer.
L. That will do. Now you may see, beforehand, that if you try to throw yourselves into square in this confused way, you will never know your places; so you had better consider every square as made of rods, put side by side. Take four beads of equal size, first, Isabel; put them into a little square. That, you may consider as made up of two rods of two beads each. Then you can make a square a size larger, out of three rods of three. Then the next square may be a size larger. How many rods, Lily?
Lily. Four rods of four beads each, I suppose.
L. Yes, and then five rods of five, and so on. But now, look here; make another square of four beads again. You see they leave a little opening in the centre.
Isabel (pushing two opposite ones closer together). Now they don't.
L. No; but now it isn't a square; and by pushing the two together you have pushed the two others farther apart.
Isabel. And yet, somehow, they all seem closer than they were!
L. Yes; for before, each of them only touched two of the others, but now each of the two in the middle touches the other three. Take away one of the outsiders, Isabel; now you have three in a triangle—the smallest triangle you can make out of the beads. Now put a rod of three beads on at one side. So, you have a triangle of six beads; but just the shape of the first one. Next a rod of four on the side of that; and you have a triangle of ten beads: then a rod of five on the side of that; and you have a triangle of fifteen. Thus you have a square with five beads on the side, and a triangle with five beads on the side; equal-sided, therefore, like the square. So, however few or many you may be, you may soon learn how to crystallise quickly into these two figures, which are the foundation of form in the commonest, and therefore actually the most important, as well as in the rarest, and therefore, by our esteem, the most important, minerals of the world. Look at this in my hand.
Violet. Why, it is leaf-gold!
L. Yes; but beaten by no man's hammer; or rather, not beaten at all, but woven. Besides, feel the weight of it. There is gold enough there to gild the walls and ceiling, if it were beaten thin.
Violet. How beautiful! And it glitters like a leaf covered with frost.
L. You only think it so beautiful because you know it is gold. It is not prettier, in reality, than a bit of brass: for it is Transylvanian gold; and they say there is a foolish gnome in the mines there, who is always wanting to live in the moon, and so alloys all the gold with a little silver. I don't know how that may be: but the silver always is in the gold; and if he does it, it's very provoking of him, for no gold is woven so fine anywhere else.
Mary (who has been looking through her magnifying glass). But this is not woven. This is all made of little triangles.
L. Say 'patched,' then, if you must be so particular. But if you fancy all those triangles, small as they are (and many of them are infinitely small), made up again of rods, and those of grains, as we built our great triangle of the beads, what word will you take for the manufacture?
May. There's no word—it is beyond words.
L. Yes; and that would matter little, were it not beyond thoughts too. But, at all events, this yellow leaf of dead gold, shed, not from the ruined woodlands, but the ruined rocks, will help you to remember the second kind of crystals, Leaf-crystals, or Foliated crystals; though I show you the form in gold first only to make a strong impression on you, for gold is not generally, or characteristically, crystallised in leaves; the real type of foliated crystals is this thing, Mica; which if you once feel well, and break well, you will always know again; and you will often have occasion to know it, for you will find it everywhere, nearly, in hill countries.
Kathleen. If we break it well! May we break it?
L. To powder, if you like.
(Surrenders plate of brown mica to public investigation. Third Interlude. It sustains severely philosophical treatment at all hands.)
Florrie. (to whom the last fragments have descended) Always leaves, and leaves, and nothing but leaves, or white dust!
L. That dust itself is nothing but finer leaves.
(Shows them to Florrie through magnifying glass.)
Isabel. (peeping over Florrie's shoulder). But then this bit under the glass looks like that bit out of the glass! If we could break this bit under the glass, what would it be like?
L. It would be all leaves still.
Isabel. And then if we broke those again?
L. All less leaves still.
Isabel (impatient). And if we broke them again, and again, and again, and again, and again?
L. Well, I suppose you would come to a limit, if you could only see it. Notice that the little flakes already differ somewhat from the large ones: because I can bend them up and down, and they stay bent; while the large flake, though it bent easily a little way, sprang back when you let it go, and broke, when you tried to bend it far. And a large mass would not bend at all.
Mary. Would that leaf gold separate into finer leaves, in the same way?
L. No; and therefore, as I told you, it is not a characteristic specimen of a foliated crystallisation. The little triangles are portions of solid crystals, and so they are in this, which looks like a black mica; but you see it is made up of triangles like the gold, and stands, almost accurately, as an intermediate link, in crystals, between mica and gold. Yet this is the commonest, as gold the rarest, of metals.
Mary. Is it iron? I never saw iron so bright.
L. It is rust of iron, finely crystallised: from its resemblance to mica, it is often called micaceous iron.