averred, in Rome a week longer than he intended, he abruptly accosts our Italian friend, assuring him that _we_ have now become such a knowing proficient in all the tricks imposed upon travellers, and in all the various guiles of antiquaries as practised at Naples, that it would be difficult to impose upon us; and that, in fact, _he_ would back us now against being cheated by the best of _them_--modest man! he might have said of _us_, in place of presenting a false lamp of dirty device, which threw the altering of this pronoun, and the substitution of the right one, upon the party whom he had been so politely praising. Purposing to start early next morning, most of our effects, both old and new, were packed up already; a few of the former, however, still remained out, and stood on a neighbouring side table. "What a beautiful _Ryton!_" said Don G. Sbano sauntering across the room, and taking up a finely executed stag's head in _terra cotta_, that had originally served for a drinking-cup--a purchase we had that morning made at old Rossi's curiosity shop. "Beautiful, indeed," replied we carelessly, and then _sotto voce_ to our friend--"poor Rossi, pleased at our sincere sympathy at his late sad bereavements--he has lost two charming daughters within a month--insisted upon transferring it to us quite as a _regallo_ at twenty piastres,"--these words were spoken in a low tone of voice, but Don Gaetano made it a point to hear every thing. "Of course we knew," _enquired_ he maliciously, "that it was a forgery in all but the lips?" "And if the lips be true, it by no means follows, Signor, that because the _lips_ are true, the _vessel_ appended to them must be so." If any man ought to know about _lying lips_, it was Sbano; so at once admitting the truth of what indeed there was no gainsaying, we contended that the indestructibility of the glaze, tested as it had been with aquafortis by Rossi himself, proved the genuineness of its antiquity--it proved nothing but that we had something still to learn! The nola varnish was light as a soap-bubble, but this on the _Ryton_ was thick and substantial. How he wished we had been to stay another week to have taught us the difference! and how we wished him gone, lest he should make some new revelations of a kindred character to the last, and betray our ignorance in sundry other matters connected with other recent purchases. The door has scarcely closed upon his coat-tails when in comes a tall strapping fellow out of breath, who begs to take a chair, and declares forthwith that he is "tutto bagnato di sudore,"--in our service, and he hopes it may not be in vain! After administering to him proper restoratives, (the remains of an _agro-dolce_, and half a bottle of lachryma,) four battered pieces of lead are presented by him for inspection, looking very much as if they had just been scraped from the house-top, but which, when duly put together by our ingenuity, make up