Brooding over the almost endless treasures of the city, I ambled into the Strozzi Palace one afternoon, that perfect example of Florentine palatial architecture, then occupied by an exposition of objects of art, reproductions and originals purporting to be the work of an association of Italian artists. After I had seen, cursorily, most of the treasures in the Palazzo Strozzi, I encountered a thing which I had long heard of but never seen,--an organization for the reproduction, the reduplication, of all the wonders of art, and cheaply, too. The place was full of marbles of the loveliest character, replicas of famous statues in the Vatican, the Louvre, the Uffizi, and elsewhere; and in many instances, also, copies of the great pictures. There was beautiful furniture imitated, even as to age, from many of the Italian palaces, the Riccardi, Albizzi, Pazzi, Pitti, Strozzi, and others; and as for garden-fittings--fountains, fauns, cupids, benches, metal gateways, pergolas, and the like, they were all present. They were marvelous reproductions from some of the villas, with the patina of age upon them, and I thought at first that they were original. I was soon undeceived, for I had not been there long, strolling about, when an attendant brought and introduced to me a certain Prof. Ernesto Jesuram, a small, dark, wiry man with clear, black, crowlike eyes who made clear the whole situation. The markets of the world, according to Mr. Jesuram, a Jew, were being flooded with cheap imitations of every truly worthy object of art, from Italian stone benches to landscapes by Corot or portraits by Frans Hals--masquerading as originals; and it had been resolved by this Association of Italian Artists that this was unfair, not only to the buyer and the art-loving public generally, but also to the honest craftsman who could make an excellent living reproducing, frankly, copies of ancient works of merit at a nominal price, if only they were permitted to copy them. Most, in fact all of them, could make interesting originals but in many cases they would lack that trait of personality which makes all the difference between success and failure; whereas they could perfectly reproduce the masterpieces of others and that, too, for prices with which no foreigner could compete. So they had banded themselves together, determined to do better work, and sell more cheaply than the fly-by-night rascals who were confounding and degrading all good art and to say frankly to each and all: “Here is a perfect reproduction of a very lovely thing. Do you want it at a very low cost?” or, “We will make for you an exact copy of anything that you see and admire and wish to have and we will make it so cheaply that you cannot afford to dicker with doubtful dealers who sell you imitations _as originals_ and charge you outrageous prices.”