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--[Greek:
meden enarghes en te psnche echontes paradeigma, mede dunamenoi osper
grapheis eis to alethestaton apoblepontes chacheise aei anapherontes te
chai theomenoi hos oion te, achribestata, onto de chai ta upo ton
chapelon hechastote proseiomena orthos diachrinein aph on de chathaper
oi thallo tini ta probata epagomenoi tous amuetous periagousin].

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 _virtu_--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 a 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 _o