who do, that of all markets for such acquisitions, the worst that an uninitiated _dilettante_ can have to do with is the Italian! First, because it abounds more than any other in trash; and secondly, because when any thing really good comes into it, the dealers take care to put their price upon it. The much prized and paraded object has in all probability already been in England, (whence, on the death of its connoisseur possessor, and the dispersion of his effects, it has again returned to its natal soil,) and is now, it may be, to be had for twice or three times as much, as you yourself might have procured it for in Christie's auction-rooms a few months before, unless you possess an accurate taste, and an intimate knowledge of what you buy. (Not, depend upon it, to be acquired, as almost all other knowledge may now be, in _six lessons_.) You must know that it is quite easy to spend indefinitely large sums in the accumulation of coarse crockery, broken glass, bits of mouldings, _scratched_ cornelians, and coins as smooth as buttons, without being able to pick one pearl from out this ancient dunghill. The peasant's ignorance, if you are also ignorant, can by no possibility be turned to your account, and, in fact, turns very much against it; for there is a prevailing tradition amongst them, that things very rare and costly, now extant in kings' palaces and great museums, have been grubbed up by the husbandman's hands; and as he cannot possibly decide what, in the amateur's mind, constitutes a prize, every fresh finding that may _possibly_ be such, is put up and priced accordingly. Now it is a safe rule here never to buy a _may be_, especially when you have to pay for it as though it were a _must be_; and if you followed the contadino to the dealer, (who, after you, becomes his next resource,) you would find that, though the former now asks pauls for piastres, and is content to substitute baiocchi for pauls, the dealer is obdurate, and leaves his wares still upon his hands.