“We owe, it is more than possible, the Venus of the Hermitage to Cæsar; the well-known ‘Whetter’ has almost certainly been saved to our admiration by Lucullus, just as Cicero may be thanked for the ‘Demosthenes’ and the collecting passion of Sallust has handed down to us the ‘Faun,’ the ‘Hermaphrodite’ and the ‘Vase’ of the Villa Borghese.” These remarks of a well-known French collector who mainly notes works contained in the Louvre Museum might be extended to many other collections, especially those of Rome, where several of the works of art have old historical records of undisputed character. From the Renaissance down to our own days the pedigrees of celebrated works of art are not only surer, but present at times a less interrupted line of descent. With such it is not uncommon to find a rare object pass from one collector to another, receiving the same care and consideration as though passing from father to son as a cherished heirloom--and it is, in fact, passing from one to another member of the same family, the family bound by an identical burning passion, that of collecting. As to the essence of this passion, so often confounded with mania--a mistake calling forth the following comment from a French collector: “... _confondre la ‘manie’ avec la curiosité, c’est prendre l’hysterie pour l’amour, ‘la Belle Helenè’ pour l’Iliade_”--we should like to quote Gersaint, one of the few men who as art dealer and collector in one, what might be styled private dealer in modern phrase, impersonated the passion, as we have said, in its highest expression among the many collectors of the eighteenth century. It must be understood, of course, that Gersaint, one of these maniacs in, say, La Bruyère’s opinion, was a representative of those passionate collectors who subordinate every other passion of mankind to the one they have made the sole aim of their lives. “... A _curieux_,” says this unilateral lover but not hobbyist collector, “has the advantage of not falling an easy prey to the many passions so familiar to the human family: the _curiosité_ fills all the empty spaces of his leisure moments. Entertained by his cherished possessions, he has time only for working at the advance of his _curiosité_, and his cabinet becomes the centre of all his pleasures, and the seat of all his passions.” The outsider and half-way-insider will agree that this is a trifle too much; but, after all, the great collectors who have left to the museums of their countries fortunes that would have been lost but for their intense passion--treasures of art left by the ignorant to the doom of decay--have all felt, more or less, the burning passion described by Gersaint, in the passage quoted which goes on to assert that a true paradise awaits the perfect collector, who is never bored, and never the prey of spleen.