In Beau Brummel’s time not to know all about gem-engraving, the intaglio and the cameo, was thought to be devoid of one of the most important cultural attributes of every eighteenth-century gentleman. Those were the picturesque days of post-riders and sealing-wax, days that scarcely anticipated the letter-writing necessities of our own time, when we can scarcely stop to put on the stamp and one lick of the flap has taken the place of the perfumed elegance of yesterday’s wafer, leisurely impressed with some exquisite seal. It was only natural then that the seal should be a factor in the diversions of polite society while possessing a utility not yet exterminated by demands on man’s time. Not only did every gentleman have a seal ring, but often he had several, and sometimes many for different occasions. Frequently these seals or _sigilii_, as the Latins called them, were engraved with devices directly upon metal. However, the far more popular method was that which is one of our chief heritages from antiquity--engraving on gems or on semi-precious stones by means of the intaglio process. _Intaglio_, derived from the Italian _intagliere_ (to cut into), means _incised_ engraving, as opposed to the _cameo_ process, or engraving _in relief_. Cameo-engraving is a later art, as generally practised, and cannot compare with that of intaglio-engraving, with which it has nothing in common but its subject and the material on which it is cut. An intaglio is the product of a reverse and much more difficult process than that by which the cameo is evolved. An impression from a well-cut intaglio leaves a very fine design in relief, and it is marvelous to behold the results obtained by the infinite pains of gem-engravers. In our own day the masters of the art can be counted on the fingers of one hand, so greatly has the demand for work of the sort diminished. Indeed, there is almost no call for it in America. Probably this is due to the fact that so few people really either understand the importance of the subject, the history of glyptic art, or realize the beauty of the fine works of the sort. It should be borne in mind that although engraved gems, unlike Greek painted vases, are chiefly valuable as handmaids to history in preserving to us contemporary portraits of their times, they still make known to us, as Collingnon says, a whole phase of Greek thought that was developed in the Macedonian epoch.