Morning journal and courier., 1890-08-19

not misplaced. for after a time the body of a murdered man was discovered near the city walls in deep ditch, which was rec ognized as that of the missing servant. An attempt at robbery had evidently been made, and the faithful fellow had re- mained true to his masters interests to his last moments; for on the surgeons exam ming the body the diamond was found in his stomach, he having swallowed it as the only means left to him of outwitting his assailants This diamond remained in the possession of the family for several more generations, but was at last sold to James III., of England, who presented it to Lou is XIV. It remained among the crown jewels of France for some time, but was finally purchased by the Russian banker Demidorff
 An interesting anecdote is related in the life of Lord John Lawrence in regard to that most famous diamond, the Kohinoor. When the precious gem was committed to the care of Lord Lawrence he stuffed it into his waistcoat pocket and went on with business. Dinner time arriving, he charged his clothes and threw his waistcoat aside. Six weeks later message came that the queen desired the diamond to be sent home at once. The matter had entirely escaped the memory of the absent-minded lord, and he at first avowed that he had 
 came back to him he was badly frightened, but allowed no misgivings to appear, and took the first opportunity to slip away tc his private room. Once there, with his heart ia his mouth, he sent for his native servant and said to him: Have you got small box which was in my vaistcOat pocket some time agoF' ''Yes, sahib, the man replied. sI found it and put it in one of your boxes" Bring it here" said the sahib. Upon this the servant went to a broken-down tin box and produced the little one from it. ''Open it." said Lord Lawrence, ''and see what is inside" He watched the man anxiously as fold after fold of cloth was taken of, and great was his relief when the brilliant gem appeared. The servant seemed perfectly unconscious of the immense treasure he had had in his keeping "There Is nothing here, sahib," he said, ''but bit of glrss." Thus, through the indifference of native ser want, what might have been serious loss was turned into a happy recovery.
 In an interesting article on the romance of literary discovery writer in an Eng fish periodical names a number of notable book recoveries in ancient times. Among these is Homer's Odyssey" three hundred lines of which were found grasped in the hands of a mummy at Monfalont; one of Cicero's most interesting treatises, which was found amid a heap of refuse near Mi Ian by bishop of Lodi early in the if teenth century, and the well-known in stance of the recovery of the original man uscript of Magma Charta from the. hands of tailor who was cutting it up for pat terms. An equally singular recovery was that of a small portion of what was sup posed to be one of the lost books of Livy. The tutor of French nobleman in the fifteenth century was playing tennis, when he chanced to notice that his racquet bat was made of parchment covered with wri- ting. AS he was a good scholar he suc- ceeded in deciphering it, and found that it was piece of historical Latin prose, in very much the style of Livy. He instant ly hurried to the racquet maker, but in vain The man could only tell him that he had fallen in with mass of parch- men, and that it had long since been used up in the making of racquet bats.
 More fortunate than the tutor was 8 scholar named Musso, who chanced one afternoon to enter bookbinder's shop in Paris. Noticing that the man. was about to cut up mass of manuscript, he begged leave to examine it. To his surprise he Agobard, a learned prelate of the ninth century. Seeing its value, Musso pur- chased the manuscript. and thus preserved a volume which contained many valuable | details of those early days.
 The recovery of the ..Ethiopica" of Hel-
 iodorus, a Christian bishop of the fourth
 century. is cited as little short of miracu- | lous. During the slack of Ofen, in 1526, | a common soldier saw a manuscript lying | in the streets, begrimed with dirt and trampled under foot by his comrades, who were intent on plundering the houses. Noticing that it was richly bound, he picked it up and conveyed it to Germany,
 where it was shortly afterward printed and became one of the most popular TO- mances of the times.
 Still more remarkable was the discovery | of Martin Luther's liable Talk" In the
 year 1926 German gentleman named Cas-
 barus Von Sparr was engaged in building
 vations the workmen came upon a small
 square package wrapped in strong linen
 cloth, which had been carefully plastered 1 all over with beeswax- On opening and
 examining the parcel a volume was dis
 covered. This volume was Luther's work,
 the only copy in existence It had evi-
 dently been buried by Won Sparr's grand
 father to escape the penalty of an edict is
 sued by Rudolph H. at the instigation of
 Pope Grkgory XIII, making it death for
 any one to possess the work. The loss of
 this book would have been a great misfor-
 tune, for without it We never should have | understood the character of the great re-
 former-never have known what he was
 when surrounded by his family and his
 friends.