the highly interesting inscription,--"_Imp: Cæs: Vespas: Aug: Pont: Max: Opt; Princip: P. P._," and are no sooner so collocated than our new-comer seems enchanted at a discovery which he would have us think as important as any thing lately done in that way. After the making of which, he expects that we are to carry over this leaden trophy to England, and is much mortified accordingly at our disheartening remark, that "it was so easy to write upon lead!" Upon seeing that we are indisposed to be cheated, he resolved to humiliate us in the eyes of our friend, which he does effectually by merely glancing at a small _urceolus_ with a painting on it, and then proclaiming it to be "_ristaurata_;" a most ungrateful return, as we think, for our "_restoration_" of him. He has scarcely vanished when a third party, "happy to catch us just at dinner-time," is announced; he comes with a mouthful of lies, and a pocketful of trash, and seeing that we are beginning to wince, is retiring, but suddenly recollecting himself, pulls up at the door to ask whether it be true that we have _not_ bought Coco's _Augustus_, since, if we have been so lucky as to purchase it, Coco has in that case cheated him by pretending to have received nothing for it. "Go to ----!" exclaimed we, losing all patience at the ignorance thus plainly imputed to us, "do you think we were such a fool as to buy _such a forgery_?" Then comes a very _douce_, quiet-mannered dealer, wishing, if our friend will excuse him, to have a private interview with us just for a moment, as he has something confidential to communicate. "Signor mio," says he, "when we are in privacy," folding his hands over his breast and looking very contrite, "I am bound to confess to you that the man whom I have hitherto called 'cousin,' is not such, nor indeed any relation or connexion of mine! I know you have been cheated _often_, _sadly_, and _by him_; and, much as it has gone against my heart whenever I have heard him and his crew plot against your ingenuousness, I have long intended to be frank with you, as you have always treated me with frankness. Believe me I have ever opposed your 'ingannazione,' though without success; and, as I have no other shop in which to put my _real_ antiques excepting this man's, I am glad to pay ten per cent to interest him in their sale; but that _terra cotta_ cow that he sold you, 'twas a sad piece of business," and he looked at us as a Mackenzie might have looked upon some artless victim to man's depravity! Whereupon a new light seemed all at once to break in upon us, and we resolved to get at the truth, if we could, by a _ruse_ which should throw him off his guard; so, in place of appearing put out by the discovery, we merely said--"Well, if all forgeries were but nearly as well executed as _that_, who would care to buy antiques at all; and besides, as it _is_ a forgery, we may have a good chance of _getting some more of the casts to