afford the information, there is yet evidence of the religion of this
man, of the particular sect of that religion to which he belonged, of
his peculiar shade of colour, of the object of his stay at the
manor-house of Saul, of the special tribe amongst whom he formerly
lived. "What," he asks, when his greedy eyes first light on the
long-desired gem, "what is the meaning of the inscription 'Has'"--the
meaning which _he_ so well knew. "One of the lost secrets of the
world," replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned
Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent
circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to
the solution of the riddle, or else--what is more likely, in spite of
his rather high-flown estimate of his own "Reason"--that his mind, and
the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time
than the Edmundsbury Monks. But _they_ did not make the stone, nor did
they dig it from the depths of the earth in Suffolk--they got it from
some one, and it is not difficult to say with certainty from whom. The
stone, then, might have been engraved by that someone, or by the
someone from whom _he_ received it, and so on back into the dimnesses
of time. And consider the character of the engraving--it consists of _a
mythological animal_, and some words, of which the letters "Has" only
are distinguishable. But the animal, at least, is pure Persian. The
Persians, you know, were not only quite worthy competitors with the
Hebrews, the Egyptians, and later on the Greeks, for excellence in the
glyptic art, but this fact is remarkable, that in much the same way
that the figure of the _scarabaeus_ on an intaglio or cameo is a pretty
infallible indication of an Egyptian hand, so is that of a priest or a
grotesque animal a sure indication of a Persian. We may say, then, from
that evidence alone--though there is more--that this gem was certainly
Persian. And having reached that point, the mystery of "Has" vanishes:
for we at once jump at the conclusion that that too is Persian. But