you may easily find! Lastly, let no cinque-cento object of virtù tempt you to show your purse till you have taken advice from a learned friend, to whom such exhibitions are familiar. Considering the vast preliminary knowledge, both of men and things, necessary to the judicious completion of each particular purchase, you will, unless you opine, with Hudibras, that
"The pleasure is as great,
Of being cheated, as to cheat,"
be very slow in making any acquisition of price, from such a suspected source as the cabinet of the antiquary. But if you have unfortunately been made a dupe of—what remedy? That depends, if you have been led to purchase any thing under a false impression of its antiquity; and can prove this. The law itself would step in, in such a case, to repossess you of your purchase-money. If, indeed, the strong and pervading feeling amongst the other antiquari, as in an assize of crows, were not of itself sufficient to secure the condign punishment of the culprit, which consists in compelling him to refund. But this redress only extends to one particular kind of fraud, that, namely, included under the rhetorical figure called metonymy, (i.e. the substitution of one thing for another,) and does not extend beyond this; so that, though a dealer were to sell an old hatchet for one hundred pounds, provided it had the necessary patina upon it to establish its antiquity—this not constituting a case of cheating, (at least, in the antiquarian sense of the term,) but merely one of superior tact—brother-dealers might indeed condole with you in your mistake; but nobody has any right to interfere!
When you do buy, you must take nothing for granted but that you will be cheated; and get a written declaration from the dealer, that what he sells you has been paid for, as genuine, on the score of antiquity. There are, too easy purchasers, who rest satisfied with the man's word, (as if a dealer's words were aught but wind, or wind but air,) who always professes to believe that the object he has for sale is of sacrosanct antiquity, and the best of its kind, (if an onyx, for instance, not Oriental only, but Orientalissimo,) though he observes, in a sort of moralizing parenthesis, that he will not vouch for what the ignorant or the malicious may say. Here you must, we fear, range yourself on the side of malice and ignorance; non vale niente, the object is good for nothing; and if you swallow such a bait, you are a bête for your pains. Amici miei of Oxford and Cambridge, excuse the informality of self-introduction; and pray keep your caution-money till you have taken your Master-in-Arts degree abroad. If you pay it on the initiatory matriculation of a first journey, you may depend upon never getting any of it back; when on having studied anew the "art of self-defence," to protect you against another art, which you must also study, in close connexion with the "belle arti," you are become really an adept, and duly qualified for that diploma. Study antiquities in public museums; so shall you learn to appraise at their true value the gauds of dealers, which, if you have not educated your taste into a wholesome fastidiousness, by a diligent study of the real treasures of antiquity, you may chance to find most dangerously attractive— μηδἑν εναργἑς εν τἡ ψυχἡ εεχοντες παρἁδειγμα, μηδἑ δυνἁμενοι ὡσπερ γραφεἱς εις τὁ αληθἑστατον αποβλἑπουτες χἁκεἱσε δεἱ αναφεροντἑς τε και θεὡμενοι ὡς οιὁν τε, αχριβἑστατα, οὑτω δἡ και τα υπὁ τὡν καπἡλον εχἁστοτε προσεἱομενα ὁρθος διακρἱμειν ἁφ ὡν δἡ καθἁπερ οἱ θαλλὡ τινι τα πρὁβατα επαγὁμενοι τους αμνἡτους περιἁγουσιν.
Then you will hardly be induced to pay much for what you do not set much store by, merely for the sake of calling it your own. Add to this the further consideration, that in towns the Antiquari keep their best things for the resident collectors, so that you never see them; whilst all hopes of finding sound windfalls on the road you are journeying, are rendered futile, since Italy is now infested by lines of antiquarian footpads, who tramp as regularly as a well-organized police, right across its instep from sea to sea, and measure it lengthways from Milan to Otranto, sweeping up and carrying away every thing that is worth the transport. After this, you need hardly feel nervous (as some we have known were) lest, in the event of falling in with something exquisitely beautiful, the government should interfere to prevent its leaving Italy. Such an event not being in question, you need make no provision to meet it. Of the brigands and brigandage of Italy, the public has had enough; of her cheats and cheating—her virtuosi and their virtù—nobody has enlightened us. Nor, to say the truth, does the subject, at first sight, appear to admit of more than a few not very promising details of a not very pleasing picture of the Dutch school—the romance of the waylaid carriage in the mountain defile; the sudden report of fire-arms; the troop of gay-sashed cut-throats in sugar-loaf hats; the "faccia à terra!" the escort to the robber's cave; the life amongst the mountains; the ransom and the discharge—lend themselves much more readily to the author's pen, and present themselves much more forcibly to the reader's fancy, than the details into which we are about to enter. Still our subject has its interest, both in having a practical bearing, and in being new; and, as we have adopted it, we must make the best of it. Therefore, we propose to give a series of ana, rambling like our last, (as all "ana" claim a right to be,) but purporting to make some remarks, didactic and miscellaneous, on coins, gems, marbles, bronzes, terra cotta, and glass, each in due order of succession, our present lucubration confining itself to the mere introduction of our reader to the Antiquari themselves. Allusion has already been made to the very large sums wasted every year on the Continent by our countrymen in pursuit of the "antique," though it might be difficult to determine to what extent pubic credulity is thus annually imposed upon; difficult, because self-love is here at variance with self-interest, (silencing many a victim, who fears, lest if his mistakes were blabbed abroad, the world might append some more unflattering name to his own than that of dupe;) and difficult again, because there are gulls that will not be so called; and gudgeons who won't believe in a pike till he swallows them up alive! Thus, while the fraud practised is great, the stir it makes, in consequence of these things, is small; and it becomes, therefore, the more necessary to apprise amateurs, that the money laid out to learn experience may come to more than would purchase them a commission in the Guards!
"Not to admire's the simplest art we know,
To keep your fortune in its statu quo;
Who holds loose cash, nor cheques his changeling gold,
Buy what he will, is certain to be sold."
Much more had we to say in the way of advice to the untutored, but we refrain, for nobody has given us "salary, or chair;" and who, then, has given us the right to lecture "ex cathedrâ?" We throw out, therefore, no further "hints to freshmen," but proceed forthwith to describe a few of the more noted and sly of our antiquarian acquaintances in Italy. Some years back, we remember, all the English in Rome used to turn out a fox-hunting; it was considered an exploit, and so perhaps it was, to kill under the Arc of Veii, amidst the moist meadows of the Crembra; and to teach the Sabine Echo to respond from her hills to the sound of the British Tally-ho! Now, whilst the followers of the Chesterfield kennel sought their foxes without the walls, we always knew where to look for ours within; and, whatever their success, we always found; nay, what may sound somewhat paradoxical, but is true nevertheless, the more we hunted, the more we found. Like their brothers of the "brush," our Reynards were sly fellows too, and would double and dodge, and get away sometimes, just when we thought ourselves most sure of coming up with them—a few only we were fortunate enough to bag, and bring over in our sack (de nuit) to England. We purpose now to turn a few loose for the reader's diversion, apprising him, however, that they are mostly very old foxes; and so cannot run as far or as fast, or yield the same sport, that might have been expected had they been younger. The greatest age demands respect and precedency; and, as Venovali is the oldest, we will dispatch him first. So ho! Venovali!