delighted!" "_Dunque e fatto subito_, now that I have _shown how_ it is to be effected--just as when that great sea-captain, _quel famoso Cristoforo Colombo_"--"Yes, yes! Coco, never mind about _him_ just now." "Ah, your excellency, I perceive, knows the story! Well, here you see is a small clay vessel moulded from the antique; here a small packet which I untie; and here a little gum-water in a phial." We require no other materials--a child might do the rest. In the packet now open, we remark a quantity of a beautiful, many-coloured glass-dust, in the midst of which appear thousands of filmy flakes that have been scraped off from the sides of old lachrymatories, and present every hue of colour. In a twinkling Coco has _gummed_ the vessel all over, and in less than a minute he has rolled round its sides a rainbow robe of the most rich and glowing colours, while not a speck of clay remains visible by which to make out the fraud! "_Eccolo!_" says he, placing the beautiful fabrication in our hand; "_Eccolo!_ do you think that for such a work as _that_ I ought to have been sent for the twentieth time to prison?" Fearful of having our moral sense dazzled _by the glass_ into making some indiscreet admission, we now change the theme. We had heard that morning a good story; it was "the case of Coco _versus_ Casanuova," in which the cleverness of the former rogue had prevailed against his equally astute rival, who had himself been so obliging as to favour us with the full particulars thereof, in words like the following:--"Coco--(you know Coco?")--(Coco and I smiled, for we knew each other perfectly,)--"Well, he presents himself one day before me in a shop in the Piazza degli Orefici, bringing in a coin in his hand, which he throws down carelessly on the counter, asking me what price he should put upon it? On taking it up, I see '[Greek: Yeliôn],' which, with the common type of the Velian Lion, as we all know, _vale poco_; but, in place of a lion, this had the Athenian _diota_ (or two-eared _amphora_) upon the field of the reverse. Knowing that the rogue was eyeing me to see how I liked it, in order that he might charge for it accordingly, I asked him doubtingly whether _he_ was quite sure it was genuine, (_entertaining no doubt on that subject myself._) 'Rather an ingenious question for a profound connossieur like Casanuova, to put to a poor devil who has the good fortune for once in his life to buy something good. _You_ have no doubt about it; but if you say you have, I will take it to Tuzzi, and get his opinion first.' Fearing to lose it if he did, I confessed that I believed it genuine, and then asked him his price. 'He had _refused_ fifty; we might have it at seventy dollars.' Of course I 'was astonished,' and offered 'forty--Would that do?' No! _honest_ men had but one price; seventy he had said--seventy, he repeated, was the price.' I bought it, and paid for it and took it home, and consulted my books, and _there_ there was no such type to be