but in his studio and his dream world, that he would chat freely of his processes and ask visitors to drop in and see how, for example, his Botticelli was getting on, inviting criticisms. It is said that a Mantegna, for which he was paid four pounds, hangs in a public gallery of Italy where it was bought, however, for a far higher figure, as the cracks, must marks and patina had not then been added.

The

A favorite method of inveigling greenhorns is called in trade slang "to place pictures with a wet nurse." This means that a picture will be lodged temporarily in some peasant's house in a remote district, will perhaps hang in the stables coated with dust. Here some penetrating antiquarian will claim to have discovered it on one of his searching strolls. Under cover of the strictest secrecy, he tells his predestined prey concerning it, carrying him off to see with his own eyes. peasant interrogated always replies that he did not know the picture was there, or else, yes the picture had hung in that place since he could remember, and SO it had hung in his father's father's time, as he had often heard tell, and he had been told too it was a treasure, that he must not part with it, or only for such a sum, naming a considerable figure. This figure is a bargain, the dealer will persuade his prey, and so, generally after a little haggling, and a little reduction, all pre-arranged, the business is concluded and the peasant gets as his share a tiny modicum of the profit.

This game lends itself to infinite variations.

Sometimes genuine old pictures are really discovered in peasants' houses, but rarely in good condition. The peasants have a disastrous trick of rubbing pictures with onions to clean them. By so doing they take off not only the varnish but the precious patina and certain colors, in many

cases leaving only the mere gold background (supposing the picture is of that date), and the more deeply incised lines. These wrecks are eagerly bought for a trifle by art dealers, who employ skilled experts to restore or rather to re-make them on the basis of the original outlines. Such a skilled workman often works for the mere pittance of five francs a day. Of course he is jealously guarded from public ken while he manufactures his wares. As often as not he lives in his employer's house and is kept to his task much as Cosimo guarded Fra Filippo Lippi when he was painting his famous Madonna for the Medici house. That these counterfeits are often so excellently made is yet another testimony to Italian atavistic assimilative genius. The Italian seems by instinct to understand the touches, the feelings, of a Trecentista or Quattrocentista, and to reproduce them with sympathetic fidelity. America is full of such pictures whose antiquity often only consists in their composition and the panel on which they are painted.

Pictures of the early period with gold backgrounds and quaint draughtsmanship are regularly manufactured, especially at Siena, where the panels can be seen openly drying before the shop doors. Their foundation is a panel properly worm-eaten and chemically aged, painted on the gesso ground that was the basis for all pictures of that epoch, and to which they owe their luminous qualities. Such pictures are often made up out of a number of really old but ruined pictures, and are an ingenious puzzle that require dexterity, taste and knowledge to construct. To avoid falling into this trap, it is best, when buying pictures of the Giottesque epoch, to look for simplicity of composition, since this fabrication is easier to effect with complicated designs than in simple lines and with a paucity of personages.

A favorite test, invariably proposed by picture dealers, is to rub the surface with alcohol because if colors do not run or come away, it is (or used to be) an infallible proof that the picture is so old that colors and varnish have become an integral part. Used to be I say advisedly, for the ingenuity of man, especially in the matter of deceiving his neighbor, is fathomless. For it has been discovered that the natives of Mexico and Brazil slice into strips a certain cactus, making thence a decoction which, if mixed with white or color wash, resists the action of damp. With this mixture the natives color their huts causing them to resist. for longer, the ravages of time. Some enterprising traveller discovered this method and revealed it to Europeans. The art forgers at once made it their own, with the result that a picture painted with this cactus decoction will stand the insidious attacks of chemicals. In this wise another illusion may be laid in its grave.

As to the test of looking at the back of a panel or canvas, to deduce its age, the forger is also ready to meet that practice. Never forget that he is better acquainted with the tricks of the trade than his clients. Thus, by means of a special paste, a modern copy or pastiche of an old master is attached to the canvas or panel of some genuine but worthless old painting bought for a few pence. The concoction is then generally baked in an oven: thus the glue gets incorporated and there are formed those cracks dear to the amateur and which are to him yet another certain proof of age. Wood-ashes, and smoking in various degrees of strength, also furnish a certificate of age, and liquorice juice is as efficacious for curing pictures as for curing coughs. A decoction of liquorice is rubbed carefully over a canvas thus producing that warm golden tint that is the collector's joy. Nor do obstacles such as fly.

specks, the incrustations formed by dust and dirt, daunt the counterfeiter. He has a receipt to meet even these. Thus, to produce fly-specks, a mixture is made of weak gum tinted with China ink or sepia, into this is dipped a fine brush, then standing at some distance the operator flicks the liquid upon the canvas, thereby creating fly-marks that appear Nature's handiwork. If too many are formed this is easily rectified before the liquid has set. In places where the copyist's skill of hand deserts him (though this is rare for these copyists are mostly real artists) he will mess a certain spot on his picture just as an uncertain speller before the typewriter days would judiciously blot a word concerning whose spelling he was doubtful. A damp cloth will then be rubbed over the portion that is to be partly obliterated. The action of the water upon the varnish gives birth to a minute growth of mould, which carefully manipulated imitates to perfection the results that real damp and time might have brought about. Nor are those lines forgotten which in studio slang are known as pentimenti, i.e., a contour begun and then modified. Many a great master's work shows such pentimenti, and are valued as indexes of his original intentions. Could the forger overlook even this? As to signatures only the greenhorn regards these as proofs of authenticity. There are men who make a specialty of appending signatures. They know all the methods of the Masters, old and new, in signing, and would take in even the authors. A favorite dealer's device is to get this sign placed under some of the mouldy spots of which mention was made above, and, after assuring their client that in their opinion the work is by So-and-So, leave it to him to make the discovery of the signature after he has got his purchase home and has subjected it to a little of that amateur cleaning so dear to a pur

chaser's heart.

Then the dealer triumphs and the client's faith in him is strengthened.

Nor is this trade I repeat modern, nor can its followers be classed as Disraeli classed critics. Not rarely these counterfeiters were themselves good artists. Jacob van Huysum turned out Jan van Huysums a generation after Jacob's death. Constantine Netscher repeated again and again the famous portrait of Charles I., which nearly every public gallery seems to own; Luca Giordano was a past master in counterfeit, and David Teniers the Younger turned out Titians by the score, assimilating the great Master's style with surprising ability. The annals of the great auction rooms in London and Paris would furnish curious reading were the whole truth known, and as it is some of the frauds that have passed through them have given rise to some clamorous recriminations.

In order to avoid being deceived some collectors confine themselves to modern paintings. Here, at least, they say, we are safe. So long as they buy from the artist but not after. The forger meets him almost on the studio threshold. Fatto la legge trovato l'inganno, says an Italian proverb, applicable in more departments than those of the law. For instance, Sydney Cooper was so often imitated, so often asked to decide whether a work was from his brush, that at last he charged a regular fee to cover loss of time. understand there is in Australia an Alma Tadema that Alma Tadema never saw. And there are even those who will not accept the author's own statement. The paternity of a picture nominally by Diaz and bought for a large figure, was uselessly rejected by Diaz himself, the purchaser declaring Diaz did not know what he was talking about. Here indeed is a new case of a man convinced against his will keep

I

ing his own opinion still. The Barbizon school seems particularly to have lent itself to counterfeiting. America is crowded with Corots, Courbets, Troyons, Rousseaus, Diaz and others of the epoch.

Picture forging is perhaps the most lucrative branch of this profession, though it is rarely the makers who reap the golden harvest. Prints and drawings are a section also not to be despised. Indeed, since color-prints have come into vogue, they have proved gold-mines, for by clever tinting and stippling, and by the addition of margins put on in a manner that defies immediate detection, poor common copies of these long discarded productions have been placed on the market as specimens of the work of that master who is the fashion of the hour. As for engravings, their value can be enhanced a hundred fold by filling up the spaces of the letters of a copper plate with Spanish white and then pulling off copies that are sold as avant la lettre. Or there is another even more lucrative trick that has taken in many a connoisseur. Upon an old plate, carefully retouched, and rebitten in parts, is engraved a so-called Remarque, often one the author never employed. Here is a unique rarity, cries the dealer, and the buyer falls into the trap. Not unfrequently the paper, too, on which the pseudo old engravings are printed has been manipulated up to date, a favorite device being to plunge it in a decoction of coffee (coffee is a most valuable henchman) wherein it derives that hue generally worked by Time. This last trick, however, is easily detected. When buying an engraving of darkish hue of which you feel doubtful, moisten a corner of the paper slightly with your tongue. If the color is artificial a white spot will shortly come to view. Of course the dealer will be furious and vow you have injured his goods,

but at least you will escape tricking, and he is not in a position to go to law. Indeed, to unmask all the arts of the counterfeiter every one of our five senses must be called to aid, including that undefinable sixth sense possessed by every skilled antiquary that causes him to apprehend, he knows not why, whether an object be truly genuine. Though on this sixth sense no entire reliance should be placed, and it must be aided by the other five, and even then at times it deceives its owner. As Sir John Evans has cleverly said, "As dogs must pass through their distemper so an antiquary must have bought his forgeries before he can be regarded as properly seasoned."

Drawings professedly by Dutch and Italian Old Masters, are so common that the nicest discrimination is required. In the late eighteenth century there existed in Bologna a school of counterfeiters that turned out masterpieces on these lines, prepared with a view to the English Lord Johns doing the Grand Tour, designs that to this day fill many a portfolio in English homes or have passed into foreign hands under the auctioneers' hammer. A superior knowledge of paper grains and water-marks makes detection easier nowadays, still the prices paid are at times high enough to encourage the counterfeiter to make papers like that used in the artist's day, and further diligent search among old account books and diaries often reveal blank pages of the date required. An extra dip of coffee, a burning of the edges to give a worn look, is all that is required, and a skilful operator then draws upon it, in the style required, a silver-point or a red or black chalk design, often one that might be a first sketch of some famous picture by the master whose dead soul he is thus wronging. The whole is then generally expensively and exquisitely mounted on cardboard in the manner beloved of collectors, and

goes forth on its errand of deception. By thus mounting, too, the amateur, searching for water-marks, is deterred. That such spurious drawings are made, even in an artist's lifetime, is proved by a tale told of Gavarni, who, happening to drop into an auction room in a remote French town, found a pile of “Gavarni” drawings noted for sale. Gavarni, who recognized them as shams, protested. His protestation was received with derision, and when he gave his name the derision increased, and he was put out as an impudent brawler. "If only the drawings had been good," Gavarni used to sigh when he told the tale, and named the figure they had fetched.

Autograph hunters should above all beware how they acquire signatures or letters. Of course every one does not fall in so easily as M. Michel Chasles, the celebrated geometer, whose case brought into court remains famous. He bought a collection of some 27,000 autographs, including letters from Jesus Christ, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, Pilate, Judas, Alcibiades, for which he paid a goodly sum. The court let the counterfeiter down gently with a £20 fine and two years' imprisonment, it being pleaded by his lawyer that upon M. Chasles' gullibility the greater burden of blame must rest. He made certain demands and the merchant supplied them taut bien que mal.

It was this same urgent demand that created the skilful, indeed often highly erudite forged MSS. of the Renaissance. It was this same desire for more light upon a theme of general interest that led to the famous Shapira forgeries where the British Museum was within an ace of purchasing for a million professed variants of the Old Testament, from which error they were saved by a Frenchman's ingenuity, less disposed than an Anglo-Saxon to desire new light upon Biblical themes.

This same Shapira had previously sold, also for a huge sum, a collection of Moabite pottery, once the boast of the Berlin Museum, to the German Emperor. After Shapira's unmasking

they vanished from view.

To all these fraudulent transactions photography has proved an invaluable handmaiden, and photogravure autographs abound. A simple method of proving when an autograph be made in ink or printer's ink is to touch a letter with certain acids that absorb ordinary ink but cannot touch the more greasy mass used for printing. Still this process has its grave disadvantages, for if by a lucky chance the autograph is no facsimile it perishes under this test. But the use of photography works also in another way. In the case of old doctored parchments photography, with its acute vision, comes to the collector's aid, for if there has been previous writing on the skin this shows in the negative. But how hard it is even for experts to distinguish the false from the true is proved by the significant fact that in that world-famous auction room, the Hôtel Drouot, where twentytwo hours are required for the verification of furniture, eight days are asked for autographs.

Of course preparing parchment already written on to take new writing requires great care, for washing spoils the surface and makes it restive to receive a new impress. But when does not the counterfeiter exercise the most perfect care? Besides old unwritten parchments are often found, especially in Italy, by tearing off and reversing the covers of books. As for black letter books, Elzevirs, Aldines, &c., they are faked by the ton. A facsimile paper is made, the text photographed upon blocks and stereotyped, and the large red and black letters inserted after. Some editions princeps of the classics are distinguished by certain head and tail pieces of great charm.

Their presence or absence used to date and authenticate a book. But this was in prescientific days. The missing pieces are now slid on to more recent and less costly editions. A bibliographic expert relates how infinite are the traps set for his ilk. Thus, though in buying old books he looks at them page by page, for often a page is missing and a false one inserted, or a book is made up of three, four or five copies of the same work, but of different dates, yet even so one may walk into a trap. Once when examining a MS. he only discovered a false page by the mere chance that he noted that it was not worm-eaten, while the rest of the pages had been traversed straight through by one of these little bibliophiles. The forger had overlooked the fact that a worm eats his way from cover to cover. For the rest every detail was perfect. Literary forgeries dealing with the alterations and substitutions of texts need a work to themselves.

Illuminated manuscripts are also faked with skill and comparative ease, since the secret has been rediscovered how to apply the colors and the gold while preserving to the parchment all its transparency. After all, why should it not be possible? What man has done, man can do again, and the old monks who transcribed and ornamented their choral books had no knowledge or capacity superior to that which can still be found.

Bookbindings so much prized by amateurs, have not escaped the attention of the fakers. It is said by those who should know that it is extremely difficult to imitate the French bindings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, since it is very hard to make the new skins take on the tone acquired by the old moroccos, and still harder to give the peculiar patina to the gold tooling. Further, modern gilding stamps do not approach the exquisite