Another description of shop, the most numerous of all, is that for the sale of Roman, mosaic, and other species of jewellery. The windows of these jewellers’ shops are filled with very elegant specimens of mosaic work, in the form of brooches, bracelets, ear–drops, shawl–pins, etc., composed of minute coloured stones put together in all sorts of devices, sometimes in miniature copies of well–known pictures. The execution is marvellous.[36] The prices are moderate, but one requires to keep in mind, in some cases, the Italian method of demanding a larger price than will be taken. Even in shops professedly dealing on the principle of fixed prices, the shopkeepers are not insusceptible of a diminution, at least upon goods of a high price, although an offer of a lower price should be made only when it seems likely to be accepted. The Italians’ idea of selling in general apparently is, that if they can make a profit, however small, rather to sell than lose the chance. The system of asking a long price, to be met with an equally low offer, and by gradual approximations to come to terms, is a mode of transacting extremely repugnant to British habits, but it is sometimes encountered. I have heard of the same article being offered to an English person at one price, and sold to a native at little more than half. At the same time, it is only right to say that this was not in Rome, where, I think, on the whole, prices seem to be fair and fixed. Ladies find in the pretty silk Roman sashes and ribbons, woven, I believe, by girls on antiquated small looms in the shops where they are sold, another species of attraction. Other shops, again, are devoted to the sale of bronze and marble copies, on a small scale, of statues, heads, and ruins, particularly columns in the Forum and elsewhere; and some have small alabaster or Roman marble copies of sculptures, though for such articles Florence is the greater mart. Other shops sell copies of celebrated paintings. The visitor, therefore, has very little difficulty, if possessed of time, inclination, and money, in making a good collection to take home of objects of _virtu_, or, at least, of what will give a pleasing recollection of what one has seen in Old Rome. * * * * *