n scudi.

The laborers in the fields have so far learned the value of the stones
they find, that it becomes almost impossible anywhere in the vicinity of
Rome to buy them of the finders, even at the most extravagant prices.
Unable to distinguish in quality, and knowing that certain stones have
brought such and such prices, they refuse to sell any for a smaller
price, but retain them until the next _festa_, when they carry them in
succession to all the _mercanti di pietre_ in Rome, to see which will
offer the highest price,--a kind of vendue which evinces greater
trade-cleverness than the Italians get credit for, and which has the
effect of bringing the dealers at once to their best terms. No matter
what price you offer, they never accept it until they have tried the
value it has for others. It is only when a stone has such great value
that it justifies paying a price passing the imagination of the peasant,
that the buyer can profit by buying from the first hand.

Of the finer kind of intaglii, there is little danger of buying
counterfeits, since the art of gem-cutting is too low now to permit of
such counterfeits as might be mistaken for first-rate antiques. Of the
common kind, again, there are those which, cut with a certain
conventionalism in design and a facility in execution which incessant
repetition only can produce, cannot be imitated except at a cost utterly
beyond their market value. Like the designs on the Etruscan vases, their
main excellence is, that, being so good, they should be done so
facilely. An imitator loses the rapidity and spirit of execution. The
mass of imitations are of things only tolerably good, and of things
whose characteristics are in the execution merely, as in the Roman and
conventional Etruscan work.

I will close with one bit of advice to my readers. If your fancy finds
any satisfaction in _Scarabaei ed altri_, let your acquisition stop with
the first example,--take a sample brick from antiquity. If you once
commence collecting them in ever so small a way, or with any excuse to
your own pocket, you will find yourself subject to a fascination more
irresistible than the love of money,--more absorbing than the search for
the philosopher's stone. While you are in Rome, you will find yourself
unable to keep your feet from ways that lead to the antiquaries, or your
money out of the hands of a class (with two or three exceptions) of
cheats. You will find the extravagances of one day coming t