the occupation of the cheater; or
because, where all men are more or less proficients, the instructions of
a professor may be dispensed with. Nevertheless, if mere pre-eminence in
the dark dexterity of imposing on one's neighbour deserved this coronal,
whose brows were fitter to wear it than yours, ye professors of natural
history and of _virtu_, with whom _ingannation_ is but a collateral
branch of these your severer studies? The very name of naturalist, which
in England falls so refreshingly on our ears, accustomed as we are to
link with it the memory of such men as White, Ray, Derham, Darwin,
Paley, and a host of others, there, is but too frequently bestowed on a
class of dishonest collectors, who fill their rooms (which they dub
their museum) with a collection of modern mummies, and study nature but
to jocky amateurs in the sale of her specimens! Nor is the man called
_antiquaro_ in Italy, a whit a better representative of him whom we so
designate, than is the _soi-disant_ professor of _taxidermy_ and seller
of embalmed pole-cats of our own naturalist. Not that our thoroughbred
antiquary at home stands high in our classification of English citizens.
It was not as a reward for tracing sites, by following the vestiges of
dry rubbish near a place ending in _chester_, that the mural crown
(probably a chaplet of wallflowers) was devised by the Romans; and we,
too, have a weakness for ranging the precedents of our fellow-citizens
according to their usefulness. We have no sympathy with soulless bodies;
with miserly old men of starved affections, who are too parsimonious
even for the gout; who prefer bronze _puttini_ to babies in flesh, and
marble mistresses to a fond and pleasing wife! But this is their affair,
not ours; if they choose thus to sacrifice to the cold manes of
antiquity the sweetest and most endearing sympathies of life, the
sacrifice and the loss is their own; whilst Englishmen must admit, that
in England at least they form a very learned body, much given up to the
prosecution of curious and prying researches. But in Italy, where all
the world pretend to be antiquaries, the ignorance and incapacity of by
far the larger portion of these pretenders is marvellous. No sooner has
the _adventurer_ who prints himself antiquary, begun to cheat his way on
a little, then he addresses himself boldly to some venal professor of
archaeology too poor to refuse the bribe; who for a small consideration
undertakes to decipher