art achieved in the fifteenth century. The government manufactory in Rome occupies the apartments in the Vatican which were used as offices of the Inquisition. No copies are now made, but cases of _smalti_ are shown, containing, it is said, 18,000 different tints. Twenty years were employed in making one of the copies I have mentioned. The pieces of mosaic vary in size from an eighth to a sixteenth of an inch, and eleven men were employed for that time on each picture. A great improvement was introduced into the art in 1775 by the Signor Raffaeli, who thought of preparing the _smalti_ in what may be termed fine threads. The pastes or _smalti_ are manufactured at Venice in the shape of crayons, or like sticks of sealing-wax, and are afterwards drawn out by the workman at a blow-pipe, into the thickness he requires, often almost to a hair, and now seldom thicker than the finest grass stalk. For tables and large articles, of course, the pieces are thicker; but the beauty of the workmanship, the soft gradation of the tints, and the cost, depend upon the minuteness of the pieces, and the skill displayed by the artist. A ruin, a group of flowers or figures, will employ a good artist about two months when only two inches square, and a specimen of such a description costs from £5 to £20, according to the execution; a landscape, six inches by four, would require eighteen months, and would cost from forty to fifty pounds. This will strike you as no adequate remuneration for the time bestowed. The finest ornaments for a lady, consisting of necklace, ear-rings, and brooch, cost forty pounds. For a picture of Paestum, eight feet long, and twenty inches broad, on which four men were occupied for three years, £1,000 sterling was asked.