ve perhaps suggested better things than those he has actually
chosen. But after all," added he, "people don't like being put out of
conceit with their own opinions; and think you personally interested, if
you offer yours unasked." "I should have been sorry to have taken that
vase as antique, as he has done; or to have paid the tenth of the price
he has paid you for it." "Oh! don't be afraid; he can afford it--an
English gentleman!--and to _him_ it is worth what he paid for it; else,
if he did not think so, who forced him to take it?" "I _wonder_ now what
Father S---- would have said to it;" asked Madame of her husband,
looking up to the ceiling, and sighing. "Nothing, 'twas not in his
province to pronounce judgment in such a matter." We too _wondered_,
perhaps, what he might have said to Madame, touching her Cavaliere,
whose discourse seemed to have told almost as powerfully on her as
_his_ sermon at St Carlo's. We wondered, but _to ourselves_, and making
the common-place remark, that it seemed easier to _preach_ than to
_practise_, exchanged smiles with B---- and his wife, and withdrew, to
think over what we had seen; and to arrive at our own conclusions,
touching the general utility of fashionable and popular preaching!

BIRBONE IV.

HERR ASCHERSON.

"Rogare malo, quam emere."--SUIDAS.

Sly old fox, what pen shall do justice to thy cunning! Grave, venerable,
ancient cheat, who showest a _Bible_, left thee by some pious enthusiast
(the old family pew-book, morocco, in silver clasps--well thou lookest
to them at least) in return for many dealings with thee, and in
requital, so thou sayest, for thine incomparable disinterestedness and
honesty!

It would be no harder task to unwind a mummy, than to unroll and
unriddle _thee_, old rogue, in thy endless windings and detours! "Have
no dealings with A----," said that _timid_ rogue, the Florentine
attorney R----; "the man is so gigantic a cheat, that he frightens me!"
"and cunning to a degree" was D----'s account of him. "He is up to a
thing or two," said S----, looking knowing, and putting his finger, like
Harpocrates, to his mouth, that it went no further. A brother dealer
called him a Hebrew; another (himself as sly as any fox) admitted that
he had been overreached by him. His name, whenever mentioned, seldom
failed to call forth a smile, or a shrug, in those who had not dealt
with him; and a thundering oath against his German blood in those that
had. Mr A---- was t