Italy being the classical country of art treasures which have been exploited for centuries, and the first to issue laws and penalties on the subject, it is naturally ahead in the cryptic art of smuggling. The high tariff of the United States, but recently abolished, and the incredible prices paid by the citizens for antiques and works of art in general, make it the country best adapted to illustrate the branch of smuggling which aims at avoiding Custom House dues. When reading old and modern laws promulgated against illicit exportation of works of art, one cannot help wondering how such daring still exists, and how there should still be people willing to brave the severity of these laws. The Medicis, it is known, prescribed punishments in the second half of the sixteenth century; the Papal laws that followed were if anything even more Draconian, to say nothing of the iron laws of the former kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the severest of them all. Modern governments may not impose prison and galley so freely upon the culprit, but they are no less hard on the transgressor. Money fines are certainly exceedingly heavy, they amount at times to large fortunes. The present laws on the export of art from Italy have a preventive character which the old regulations had not. Every owner of a work of art is himself eventually responsible, and is bound to bring it before the inspectors of the Export Office, who after close examination give or withhold permission to pass the frontier. When permission is granted there is a tax to be paid averaging between 5 per cent and 20 per cent _ad valorem_, according to the inspector’s estimate, and should the object leave the country after permission has been refused, the owner is held responsible and may be called before the tribunal to answer for his action and to pay damages. An Italian adage runs: _Fatta la legge trovato l’inganno_, which in a free translation may be rendered: Make a law and the means of evasion are found. This is somewhat the fate of the protective laws regarding art in Italy, the more stringent and circumspect they are the law-breaker apparently becomes correspondingly bolder and more astute. The way in which Italian authorities have been hoodwinked at times, points to the magnitude attained by the shrewd activity of the law-breakers, and to how their art has almost been turned into a science, even calling in the aid of psychology--in this case a deep study of the faulty idiosyncrasies of the officials. A few skirmishes between the two parties concerned will serve to demonstrate the variety of the _modus operandi_ adopted by the law-breakers and their final success over an easily conquered opponent.