came kitchen furniture and chipped porcelain. Presently, the nature of the merchandise improved. The little Dutch gentleman who smoked at the door very often on summer evenings, became far more alert and less servile. Pictures succeeded old frames, porcelain replaced the cracked plates, the hovel became a shop-the shop a museum.

"The windows were washed, the interior swept; the little Dutchman, surrounded with masterpieces, became an experienced connoisseur; he had, in fact, trebled his capital, and is now feared in all the auction-rooms between Knightsbridge and Mile End. Bric-a-brac hunters know him, and ladies who search for bargains seek him out to their cost.

"The only way of approaching him with safety is under the mask of a 'collector,' or as an erudite in bric-à-brac, seeking information or exchange. Exchange being the bric-à-brac seller's darling mode of doing business, he will not (I most justly believe) cheat you when he sells or buys; but when he exchanges he flays you alive; he plucks out the very smallest feather of the pigeon's wing.

"You have noticed my little keenness,' he once observed, after some pecuniary transaction concluded to his satisfaction. Times is hard, put de honest dealer catches the customer in time. I began by running errands for the curiosity-dealers in Wardour Street, and on the Boulevard Beaumarchais at Paris I saved and saved-and you see where I am. Only Israelites, Scotchmen, Dutchmen, and Auvergnists, can do much in the bric-àbrac line. I know you gentlemen deals with lots of Englishmen with cash behind them; you'll find it's always a Jew, a Hollander, or a Scot that manages the business and pockets the profits. Our shop trade and the attendance at sales are the easiest part of our business. The difficulty is in buying what other people cannot get at. Look at those Sèvres cups, pâte tendre. A man gets more for a nameless Italian stiletto; but he must have been a shrewder fellow than half your ambassadors, take my word for it. You must be able to do more than wheedle country servants and country gentlemen, in our line.

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"A bric-a-brac dealer of my age is a regular

archæologist. To make money, he must know a good deal about sculpture, architecture, jewellery, the ceramic arts, carving, and a dozen other

matters.

"Does it not take a clever man to discover the real Holbeins, Murillos, Durers, Del Pernitros, and the rest, among fifty thousand old pictures exhibited in London during the year? How many university men know anything about old Trantreulhed, or any other works of art in china?

"The princes of the bric-à-brac trade travel over Europe. The greatest market for curiosities proper is Paris. Pictures are only sold in the three cities, London, Rome, and Paris. The masterpieces of every city are marked on their maps of Europe; and agents watch the markets and buy up the desired objects cheaply, by means of innumerable ruses, auction knocks-out, and misrepresentations. See the treasures they hold!' the little Dutchman remarked.

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'Raphael's two missing paintings are in the hands of a dealer; so is the original of Giorgione's Mistress-what the world sees are copies; so is

Titian's masterpiece "Christ taken to the Tomb," painted for Charles the Fifth. Their artistic knowledge would shame the greater part of your official museum-keepers. They laugh at your galleries. We know the best day and the best hour for viewing such-and-such a piece; while the dilettanti gentlemen judge through an eye-glass Rembrandts and Watteaus on the selfsame day.

"It is true that the cleverest of the bric-a-brac dealers are not over-scrupulous in their transactions with the unwary. They buy up old furniture, knowing or making guesses, of the valuable contents of drawers and cupboards.

"A friend of mine,' the Dutch dealer volunteered, with a twinkle in his Jewish eyes, 'got hold of an old buffet the other day for three pounds— the wood carving was worth the money-and found therein a Pompadour fan, painted by Watteau. I found,' he added, 'Spanish doubloons in an old desk, a few months since. Our best customers are all nearly the highest educated and tasteful commoners, Russian princes travelling solely in search of bric-à-brac, English peers, German bankers; and,

I may add, that many of the connoisseurs are not more scrupulous than the curiosity-mongers in their transactions, inasmuch as they employ the dealers to do not a little of the large amount of dirty work performed in the commerce of so-called articles of vertu.'

Well, all this is no doubt to be regretted; it is nevertheless the fact; and dealers of the present day, who combine to palm off modern works as rare and old on the many; dealers, more particularly in Paris, who demand fabulous sums for inferior works of art, and get them—from whom it is difficult to say, save from Americans-belong to that class which owns the "New Era," steeped in democracy-the curse of all refinement in their calling.

Modern patronage makes the artist, n'importe whether of porcelain or whatever works of art, simply a commercial man; and if he studies the taste of the day, he will be sure to get rid of his productions.

He must, however, be a free-trader, often with bad taste, and can only afford to be a protectionist when he has made his fortune.